WORD OF THE DAY
The noun tintinnabulation refers to a bell-like sound, like the tintinnabulation of wind chimes blowing in the breeze.
The sound of bells ringing, like church bells on a Sunday morning, can be called tintinnabulation. You can describe similar sounds that way, too — like the telephone's tintinnabulation or the tintinnabulation of your sister's silver bracelets tinkling together as she walks. The Latin word tintinnabulum means "bell," and Edgar Allen Poe popularized tintinnabulation's usage in the aptly named poem "The Bells."
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Vocabulary lists containing tintinnabulation
This poem by Edgar Allan Poe is notable for its masterful use of sound effects, including onomatopoeia, alliteration, and assonance. Read the full poem here. Click here to explore other works by Edgar Allan Poe.
In this retelling of the Arthurian legend, a young boy is tutored by the wizard Merlin in preparation for his future as a great king of England.
Ben Zimmer is the executive producer of Vocabulary.com and the Visual Thesaurus. He is language columnist for The Boston Globe and the former "On Language" columnist for The New York Times Magazine. He has worked as editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press and as a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. He is also the chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society. We asked Ben, as an expert on the history of American English, to give us some of his favorite words that originated in the United States. "I'm fascinated by how the English language developed a unique American flavor (not flavour!) beginning in colonial times. I've been collecting examples of great contributions from American English. Here is a cornucopia of copacetic coinages from fertile American minds."
Joe Mondragon finds a dry plot of land and illegally taps into an irrigation channel, setting up a battle between big business and the small farmers of Milagro.
