Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as calliope, 2.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • She didn't hear the rattling firecrackers from town, or the wheeze of the steam-organ in Green Heart, or the mariachi band playing in the Low Market; when a burning leaf rose and swirled past her hair, threatening to set it alight, she didn't seem to notice.

    Wizard and Glass King, Stephen 1997

  • He played the game with the organizer, rapt though he was by his memory of the steam-organ, I will say that much for him.

    Cinderella in the South Twenty-Five South African Tales Arthur Shearly Cripps 1910

  • That was the tune I remembered best of all the tunes that the steam-organ played.

    Cinderella in the South Twenty-Five South African Tales Arthur Shearly Cripps 1910

  • The proprietor of the roundabouts was sent for, and the show-ground granted to him, on condition that he made his steam-organ play hymn tunes.

    Brother Copas Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

  • There was a fair going on in the town; swing-boats and shooting-galleries and lillybanger standings, and naphtha lamps flaming, and in the middle of all, a great whirly-go-round, with striped horses and boats, and a steam-organ playing "Yankee Doodle."

    Wandering Heath Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

  • They could hear above the thud-thud of the gorged floodgates, shrieks in two keys as monotonous as a steam-organ.

    A Diversity of Creatures Rudyard Kipling 1900

  • The thick, thunderous June airs brought us gusts of melody from a giddy-go-round steam-organ in full blast near the pond on the village green.

    A Diversity of Creatures Rudyard Kipling 1900

  • There were no photographic studios and no cocoanut-shies, for these things had not been thought of; and to us moderns the fair, despite its uncontrolled exuberance of revelry, would have seemed strangely quiet, since neither steam-organ nor hooter nor hurdy-gurdy was there to overwhelm the ear with crashing waves of gigantic sound.

    Tales of the Five Towns Arnold Bennett 1899

  • But if the special phenomena of a later day were missing from the carnival, others, as astonishing to us as the steam-organ would have been to those uncouth roisterers, were certainly present.

    Tales of the Five Towns Arnold Bennett 1899

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