klaxon

Meanings

1. A loud electric alarm or horn, especially as used in automobiles in the early 20th century.

1. To produce a loud, siren-like wail.

Etymology

From the trademark Klaxon, based on Ancient Greek κλάζω (klázō, “make a sharp sound; scream”). 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).