tocsin

noun

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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “I'll ring the tocsin, I'll have Saint-Antoine out. I can put twenty thousand armed men on the streets, just like that.”

   “Allen Ginsberg had sounded the tocsin for rescuing humanity from the deadening hand of modernity, which he saw in terms of capitalism, materialism, and monotony, each contributing to the crushing of the human spirit.”

2. A bell used to sound an alarm.