sireenn.
/sʌɪˈriːn/ Now chiefly U.S. (colloquial).
= siren n. 7b.
ΘΚΠ
society > travel > travel by water > vessel, ship, or boat > equipment of vessel > other equipment of vessel > [noun] > siren
siren1879
sireen1915
1915 R. Kipling Fringes of Fleet 11 Five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing.
1940 Economist 28 Sept. 398/2 The air raids have produced some more new war words... A quite inexplicable new word is the ‘sireen’, which has widely ousted the siren. Its slight resemblance to Eileen and Doreen suggests that it may have arisen from a desire to give the noise a feminine personality.
1943 G. Greene Ministry of Fear i. i. 16 This time of night... It's the sireens.
1957 W. Faulkner Town xxiv. 363 Mr. Connors went to his [car] that had the red light and the sireen on it.
1977 J. Cleary Vortex i. 20 The siren began to wail again:..‘I wish he'd blow up that goddam si-reen.’
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online December 2020).
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n.1915