A din is a loud unpleasant noise that goes on and on. An awful din, above the din, make a din.
The continuing part is essential: a bang is not a din, and a din is what a room full of machines or children produces. It is almost always preceded by a complaint. Above the din is the fixed phrase for making yourself heard. Note that din is an old English word from a root meaning to make a noise, and that it is related to tone by a long route.
1noundinA loud unpleasant noise that goes on and on.
“We could hardly hear each other over the din of the traffic.”
din is a continuous noise.
Old English dyne comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to make a noise. Tone comes from the same root by way of Greek, so a din and a tone are distant relatives.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰwen-
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰún-is
Proto-Germanic
*duniz
Proto-West Germanic
*duni
Old English
dyne
Middle English
dyne
English, today
din
Built from
From Middle English dyne, dynne, from Old English dyne, from Proto-West Germanic duni, from Proto-Germanic duniz, from Proto-Indo-European dʰún-is, from dʰwen- (“to make a noise”). Cognate with English tone, Sanskrit धुनि (“sounding”), ध्वनति (“to make a noise, to roar”), Old Norse dynr, Norwegian Nynorsk dynja, Swedish dån, dön.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA