chime1
/tʃʌɪm
/noun
1A bell or a metal bar or tube, tuned and used in a set to produce a melodious series of ringing sounds when struck: the warm breeze whispered through the chimes hanging from the balcony ceiling...
- Take off the cover to the chimes or bells and inspect the points that strike the chime or bell for dirt.
- Some looked like variants of things I recognized; there were string instruments like lutes or small guitars, there were drums, chimes, tambourines.
- Here, Stewart's vocals hang in hazy suspensions of wafting guitars, piercing chimes, subliminal drones, and ornately wrought percussion.
1.1A melodious ringing sound produced by striking a set of chimes: the chimes of Big Ben...
- Even out here, he had heard the chimes and was transported.
- A few seconds after she spoke, the crew of the Varian could hear the same mysterious chimes floating through the air, but this time, they did have a melody.
- Reality of the situation came back down when I heard the chimes go through the house and I froze, horrified.
Synonyms
peal, pealing, ringing, carillon, toll, tolling, sound;
ding-dong, clanging;
Angelus
archaic knell
rare tintinnabulation
1.2 (chimes) A set of tuned bells used as a doorbell.It wasn't until we had reached the top platform in front of the door that we heard the bells and chimes tune telling everyone we had arrived....
- Much like musical doorbell chimes: you can only listen to a badly midi-ized version of the William Tell overture once before you rip out the batteries and revert to knocking.
- People choose chimes for two button doorbell circuits because they want different sounds for the front and back doors.
1.3 Bell-ringing A stroke of the clapper against one or both sides of a scarcely moving bell.Doomsday was not on the agenda when the chimes struck midnight and 2000 was born....
- The chime struck twice, to ring in the second millennium.
- Time passes again, the same clock hands spin madly, the same bells ring and the same chimes chime.
verb [no object]
1(Of a bell or clock) make melodious ringing sounds, typically to indicate the time: [with complement]: the clock chimed eight...
- A bell chimed from a grandfather clock in the corner of the room.
- Elsewhere, other fireworks lit the night sky, as the St Magnus Cathedral bells chimed over Broad Street revellers and Stromness echoed to the sound of ships' horns.
- At 10.29 am, when the second tower collapsed, bells chimed and fog-horns of boats on the nearby Hudson River sounded.
Synonyms
ring, peal, toll, sound;
ding, dong, clang, boom, resound, reverberate;
tinkle, jingle, jangle
archaic knell
rare tintinnabulate
strike, sound;
indicate, mark
2 (chime with or chime in with) British Be in agreement with: his poem chimes with our modern experience of loss...
- Moreover, the apparently abstract nature of many of the paintings - particularly those with a limited range of colours and a simple geometric composition - chimes with the modern design aesthetic.
- Housing experts believe that the market in Scotland will continue to slow this year with rises pegged at around an average of 5% at the most, chiming with the results of the YouGov survey.
- But now the same complaint is chiming with adults, angered by a decision to go to war that flies in the face of public opinion.
Synonyms
accord, correspond, be consistent, be compatible, agree, be in agreement, be in accordance, fit in, be in harmony, harmonize, be in tune, be consonant, be similar
informal square
Phrasal verbs
chime in
Derivatives
chimer
/ noun ...- The most surreal presence was a black-and-white monitor of the conductor, there for the benefit of the backstage conductress to direct a chimer who had to ape the sounds of church bells.
- Luckily, it's one of those funky wireless contraptions, so we can put the chimer anywhere in the apartment.
- Third, as shown in the following billboards, some chimers may be tinkling the bells of inappropriate servers.
Origin
Middle English (in the senses 'cymbal' and 'ring out'): probably from Old English cimbal (see cymbal), later interpreted as chime bell.
cymbal from Old English:
The shape of a cymbal is central to its name: it comes via Latin cymbalum from Greek kumbalon, from kumbē ‘cup’. Chime (Middle English) was first recorded as meaning ‘cymbal’ as a noun, and ‘ring out’ as a verb. It is probably the Old English form, cimbal (which would have been pronounced with a ‘ch’ sound, the modern ‘s’ sound coming from French) later interpreted as chime bell.
Rhymes
chime2
/tʃʌɪm/noun
The projecting rim at the end of a cask.There is disclosed a cask and chime assembly wherein the cask has end surface side wall portions of reduced diameter relative to the central wall surface portion of the cask....
- These chimes have a rim portion with an in-turned flange that fits into a groove located in the cask.
- First, the rim or 'chime' of a cask was bevelled to slope inwards, and then finished off with a smaller sharp adze.
Origin
Late Middle English: probably from an Old English word related to Dutch kim and German Kimme. Compare with chine3.