brrrrrrrr.

n.  a “fast and technical” drum roll, as when playing the Afro-Cuban timbales (Victor Rendon, The Art of Playing Timbales Volume 1).


n.  a “long trilled shiver” at the beginning of the Silvestre Méndex song “Druma Kuyi,” sung with “an otherworldly timbre in order to meet the spirits halfway and entreat them to descend to earth”; the brrrrrrrr “possibly has a semantic value, since extraordinary vocal quality plays an important role in Afro-Cuban religious music” (Charley Gerard, Music from Cuba: Mongo Santamaria, Chocolate Armenteros, and Other Stateside Cuban Musicians).


n.  a baseball umpire’s whistle, as described in The Brothers K by David James Duncan.


n.  the high-pitched humming of a surgical saw, as described in Religion, Spirituality and the Near-Death Experience by Mark Fox.


n.  the purring call of the Spotted Honeyguide bird, “slightly reminiscent of [the] song of [the] Double-toothed Barbet” (Ron Demey, A Guide to the Birds of Western Africa).


n.  the quality that “reeks” from the patriotic hymn “I Am a 100% American” by William W. Woollcott (H.L. Mencken, Heathen Days: 1890-1936).


n.  the ringing of a telephone.

<I vas sleeping like a baby after the good party last night and, brrrrrrrr the phone ring.  —Andy Varlow, Just Another Man: A Story of the Nazi Massacre of Kalavryta.>

n.  the sound of a telephone flying across the room, as in the novel Born Free by Laura Hird.

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