klaxon

Meanings

Noun

• A loud electric alarm or horn.

Verb

• To produce a loud, siren-like wail.

Origin

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• From the trademark Klaxon, based on Ancient Greek κλάζω ("make a sharp sound; scream") (from Proto-Indo-European *glag- ("to make a noise, clap, twitter"), from *gal-). The word was coined by Franklyn Hallett Lovell Jr., the founder of the Lovell-McConnell Manufacturing Co. of Newark, New Jersey, USA, which in 1908 obtained a licence of the patent to the machine generating the sound from American inventor Miller Reese Hutchison (1876–1944).