bells

Meanings

Noun

• a hollow device made of metal that makes a ringing sound when struck
• a push button at an outer door that gives a ringing or buzzing signal when pushed
• the sound of a bell being struck
  • "she heard the distant toll of church bells"
• (nautical) each of the eight half-hour units of nautical time signaled by strokes of a ship's bell; eight bells signals 4:00, 8:00, or 12:00 o'clock, either a.m. or p.m.
• the shape of a bell
• a phonetician and father of Alexander Graham Bell (1819-1905)
• English painter; sister of Virginia Woolf; prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group (1879-1961)
• United States inventor (born in Scotland) of the telephone (1847-1922)
• a percussion instrument consisting of a set of tuned bells that are struck with a hammer; used as an orchestral instrument
• the flared opening of a tubular device
• plural of bell
• Ship's bells; the strokes on a ship's bell, every half-hour, to mark the passage of time.
• Ellipsis of bell-bottoms.

Verb

• attach a bell to
• third-person singular simple present indicative of bell

Synonyms

Alexander Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Melville Bell, Bell, bell, bell shape, buzzer, campana, chime, doorbell, gong, Melville Bell, ship's bell, toll, Vanessa Bell, Vanessa Stephen