clangour

• clangor (US, Canadian)

From Latin clangor.

• IPA^(key): /ˈklæŋɚ/, /ˈklæŋɡɚ/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -æŋə(ɹ), -æŋɡə(ɹ)

clangour (countable and uncountable, plural clangours)

1. (British, Canada) A loud, repeating clanging sound; a loud racket; a din.
   • [1611?], Homer, “Book III”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, →OCLC; republished as The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], new edition, volume I, London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843, →OCLC, page 80:

     When every least commander’s will, best soldiers had obey’d, / And both the hosts were rang’d for fight, the Trojans would have fray’d / The Greeks with noises; crying out, in coming rudely on / At all parts, like the cranes that fill with harsh confusion / Of brutish clangour all the air; […]

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 1920, D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, Chapter XXIV: Death and Love,

     And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there passed through Gerald's bowels a burning stroke of revolt, that seemed to resound through his whole being, threatening to break his mind with its clangour, and making him mad.

• clangorous
• clangorously

clangour (third-person singular simple present clangours, present participle clangouring, simple past and past participle clangoured)

1. (British, Canada) To make a clanging sound.
   • 1924, Jim Tully, Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography, page 67:

     It clangoured through the house like a bell in a tomb.