[f. CHIME v.1] The action of the vb. CHIME in various senses.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Carillon, a chimyng of bels, courfew.
1646. Shirley, Friendship, Wks. VI. 453. The chiming of the Spheres.
1667. Dryden, Ess. Dram. Poesie, Wks. 1725, I. 74. The Rhyme is disposed carelessly, and far from often chyming.
1721. Strype, Eccl. Mem., II. I. I. xxxii. 266. [Piers Plowman] is writ in metre, but much different from the manner of our modern verse, there being no rhithms or chiming of words.
1864. Ecclesiologist, in Ellacombe, Bells of Ch., iv. (1872), 73. In both chiming and ringing the motion of the bell is oscillatory.
b. Comb., as chiming-barrel (see quot.).
1884. F. J. Britten, Watch & Clockm., 51. [The] Chiming Barrel … [is] a brass or wooden cylinder studded with pins for lifting the hammers in a chiming train.
