• enPR: bĕl, IPA: /bɛl/

bell (plural bells)

1. A percussive instrument made of metal or other hard material, typically but not always in the shape of an inverted cup with a flared rim, which resonates when struck.
   • 1848, Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells"

     HEAR the sledges with the bells —

     Silver bells!

     What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

2. The sounding of a bell as a signal.
3. (chiefly, British, informal) A telephone call.

   I’ll give you a bell later.

4. A signal at a school that tells the students when a class is starting or ending.
5. (music) The flared end of a brass or woodwind instrument.
6. (nautical) Any of a series of strokes on a bell (or similar), struck every half hour to indicate the time (within a four hour watch)
7. The flared end of a pipe, designed to mate with a narrow spigot.
8. (computing) A device control code that produces a beep (or rings a small electromechanical bell on older teleprinters etc.).
9. Anything shaped like a bell, such as the cup or corolla of a flower.
   • 1610–1611, William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act V, scene i]:

     In a cowslip's bell I lie.

10. (architecture) The part of the capital of a column included between the abacus and neck molding; also used for the naked core of nearly cylindrical shape, assumed to exist within the leafage of a capital.
11. An instrument situated on a bicycle's handlebar, used by the cyclist to warn of his or her presence.

• (in heraldry) campane
• (rare) tintinnabule

• French: cloche
• German: Glocke
• Italian: campana
• Portuguese: sino (especially a big one), campainha (small)
• Russian: ко́локол
• Spanish: campana big, campanilla small

• French: sonnerie
• German: Klingeln
• Portuguese: badalada
• Russian: звон

• French: coup de fil
• German: Klingel
• Italian: chiamata, telefonata
• Portuguese: toque
• Russian: звоно́к

• French: sonnerie
• German: Klingel, Schelle
• Italian: campanella
• Portuguese: sinal, campainha
• Russian: звоно́к

• French: pavillon
• Russian: ра́струб

• Russian: скля́нка

• French: sonnette
• Portuguese: campainha

bell (bells, present participle belling; past and past participle belled)

1. (transitive) To attach a bell to.

   Who will bell the cat?

2. (transitive) To shape so that it flares out like a bell.

   to bell a tube

3. (slang, transitive) To telephone.
4. (intransitive) To develop bells or corollas; to take the form of a bell; to blossom.

   Hops bell.

• Russian: звони́ть

bell (bells, present participle belling; past and past participle belled)

1. (intransitive) To bellow or roar.

   • As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled / Once, twice and again!

   • 1872, Robert Browning, Fifine at the Fair ↗:

     You acted part so well, went alɬ-fours upon earth / The live-long day, brayed, belled.

   • 1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber and Faber 2005, page 128:

     Then, incredibly, a rutting stag belled by the trunks.

2. (transitive) To utter in a loud manner; to thunder forth.
   • 1591, Edmund Spenser, Astrophel:

     Their leaders bell their bleating tunes In doleful sound.

bell (plural bells)

1. The bellow or bay of certain animals, such as a hound on the hunt or a stag in rut.

• IPA: /bɛl/

1. A Scottish and northern English surname for a bell ringer, bellmaker, or from someone who lived "at the Bell (inn)"
2. The Bell telephone company (after Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.)
3. A male given name.
4. A female given name; mostly used as a middle name in the 19th century.
   • 1857 Charles Dickens, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, Chapter 1:

     […] I found that her Christian name was Isabella, which they shortened into Bell, and that the name of the deceased non-commissioned officer was Tott. Being the kind of neat little woman it was natural to make a toy of—I never saw a woman so like a toy in my life—she had got the plaything name of Belltott. In short, she had no other name on the island.

bell (plural bells)

1. (US, Canada) a telephone utility; a Baby Bell.