rrrrrrr.

n.  the howling siren of a fire engine; see also rrrrrrr-RRRRRRR.

<“I’m a fire engine!” shouts the child.  “Rrrrrrr!”  We hold ears and smile patronizingly, imprisoned in our plans for the future and our memories of the past.  —W.S. Merwin, Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen.>

n.  the hum of a model train.

<She was conscious, too, dimly now and with a different horror, of the old, unceasing voices of customers at the counter calling for assistance, calling to her, and of the low, humming rrrrrrr of the little train, part of the storm that was closing in and separating her from the woman.  —Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt.>

n.  the hum of an alien spacecraft taking off.

<[The UFO] just kind of sat there for a second, and I heard the engines start to go up again, “rrrrrrr.”  And it lifted up and slowly went off and went looking around in the trees again. ... I heard it increase in pitch.  It started to go “rrrrrrr,” and when it was doing that, it was raising up.  —Preston Dennett, Extraterrestrial Visitations: True Accounts of Contact.>

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