A powerful whistle worked by a jet of steam (usually from a steam-boiler): used as a signal.
1840. H. S. Tanner, Canals & Rail Roads U. S., 261. Steam whistle, a device for warning persons when the engine is approaching.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, xiv. The voice of their modern muse has a slight hint of the steam-whistle.
1899. T. M. Ellis, Three Cat’s-Eye Rings, 123. A bullet … shrieked past Clayside’s ear like a steam-whistle.
attrib. 1870. Ruskin, Lett., in Athenæum (1905), 30 Sept., 428/3. Dickens was a pure modernist—a leader of the steam-whistle party par excellence.
1887. F. Hume, Myst. Hansom Cab, viii. Let us go outside, for I see your father has got that girl with the steam-whistle voice to sing.
Hence Steam-whistling vbl. sb.
1866. Ruskin, Crown of Wild Olive, iv. § 152. Steam-piston labour on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with steam-whistling.
