Word.ws English Dictionary

tocsin

Syllables: toc·sin/ˈtɒksɪn//ˈtɑksɪn/

tocsin noun: an alarm or other signal sounded by a bell or bells, originally especially with reference to France.

Noun

tocsin (plural tocsins)

  1. An alarm or other signal sounded by a bell or bells, originally especially with reference to France.
    • At half-past one, on the sounding of the tocsin (or bell of the public-house) about fifteen persons were collected, when the Rev. J. Bromley was called to the chair.1804 August 23, The Times, p.3 col. C
    • The noise of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany Street Barracks, and every church within earshot was hard at work killing sleep with a vehement disorderly tocsin.1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “In London”, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, book I (The Coming of the Martians), page 131
  2. A bell used to sound an alarm.

tocsin meaning in Tamil, Bengali and Kannada

tocsin in Tamil

எச்சரிக்கை, எச்சரிக்கை மணி

tocsin in Bengali

সতর্কীকরণ ঘণ্টা, সংকেত

tocsin in Kannada

ಅಪಾಯಸೂಚಕ ಸಂಜ್ಞೆ, ಅಪಾಯದ ಗಂಟೆ

Examples of tocsin in a sentence

  • As she entered the projection theatre the soundtrack reverberated across the sculpture garden, a melancholy tocsin modulated by Talbert’s less and less coherent commentary.1970, JG Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition:
  • I'll ring the tocsin, I'll have Saint-Antoine out.1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, page 281:

Forms of tocsin

pluraltocsins

Origin of tocsin

Borrowed from Middle French, from Old French toquesain (modern tocsin), from Old Occitan tocasenh, from tocar (“strike, touch”) + senh (“bell”).

Words that rhyme with tocsin

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tocsin

What does tocsin mean?
Tocsin means an alarm or other signal sounded by a bell or bells, originally especially with reference to France.
What is tocsin in Tamil?
Tocsin in Tamil is எச்சரிக்கை, எச்சரிக்கை மணி. See Tocsin meaning in Tamil.
How do you use tocsin in a sentence?
As she entered the projection theatre the soundtrack reverberated across the sculpture garden, a melancholy tocsin modulated by Talbert’s less and less coherent commentary.
What part of speech is tocsin?
Tocsin is a noun.
How do you pronounce tocsin?
Tocsin is pronounced /ˈtɒksɪn/ (UK).
What is the plural of tocsin?
The plural of tocsin is tocsins.

Words near tocsin in the dictionary

  1. tocrack
  2. tocracked
  3. tocracking
  4. tocracks
  5. TOCs
  6. tocsin
  7. tocsins
  8. Toctoc
  9. TOCTOU
  10. TOCTTOU
  11. Tocumwal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tocsin (page history and authors); tocsin (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tocsin (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tocsin (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-tocsin.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-toxin.wav.

Cite this entry: “tocsin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tocsin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.