A Word With You
March 15th, 2010
Klaxon
–noun
a loud electric horn, formerly used on automobiles, trucks, etc., and now often used as a warning signal.
Also, claxon.
Origin:
1905–10, Americanism; formerly trademark
Cool words don’t necessarily have to be polysyllabic, it just usually works out that way. I’m also inordinately fond of originally complex words that have, over time, become simplified, and let’s face it, ordinary. Not that there’s anything wrong with ordinary, common place, simple communication, it certainly has its place. I will admit to a fondness for old movies where diction and vocabulary was the ordinary; where the way you spoke denoted who you were as well as what you wished to communicate.
Anyway, today’s word is deceptively simple, and as I’ve harped before, it’s a little-used word that I myself am sorry to see go. So, go ahead, next time the annoying nitwit behind you gets impatient just because you’re a little slow on the gas pedal at a green light, you can tell him he can stick his klaxon in his ear!
Interesting side-note, klaxon is a trademark for an electromechanical horn or alerting device. The Lovell-McConnell Manufacturing Co. of Newark, New Jersey bought the rights to the device in 1908. F. W. Lovell, the founder, coined the name klaxon from the Greek verb klazō, “to shriek”. Since then this word has become a ubiquitous label for a loud obnoxious horn noise. You go, Jersey! Dare I hope that someday Grammar Punk will become the household word for cool grammar game?
Give it a try. Share your sentence with us. Make sure it contains 2 words with the letters K and A and the word klaxon or one of its derivatives.
Grammar Punk Sentence:
K A 2 Adv. ;
Leaning impatiently on the fire engine’s klaxon, Sidney eyed the busy intersection ahead; this was what he got for volunteering to pick up the ice cream cake!
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