What is »Trööt«?

Question

The word Trööt appears in the title of the article “Bundesregierung im Fall Yücel. Protest ohne Trööt.” from Der Spiegel.

For context purposes, here is the introductory paragraph of the article:

Der deutsch-türkische Journalist Deniz Yücel sitzt in der Türkei in U-Haft: Die Kanzlerin zeigt ihre Enttäuschung, Außenminister Gabriel bittet den türkischen Botschafter zum Gespräch. Sind damit ihre Möglichkeiten schon erschöpft?

The word Trööt is not listed in any of the online dictionaries in which I looked it up (dict.cc; dict.leo.org, en.pons.com, dictionary.reverso.net, duden.de).

So, first question, what does the word Trööt mean?

And, second question, are there any other German words with two consecutive umlaut letters? My memory may be failing me, but I don't remember seeing two consecutive umlaut letters in any of the other German words that I came across during the past three years of reading the German press.

Answer 1

Trööt is an onomatopoeia. It is meant to symbolise the sound that you get out of a trumpet (or other brass instrument) or a party horn. Various types of the latter are frequently present at demonstrations — which could, thus, be considered Protest mit Trööt.

Here, obviously, the Spiegel is criticising the federal government for protesting in the most silent (and thus unnoticeable) way possible; they might have preferred much clearer statements with more noise.

Trööt is neither an established word nor an established spelling. The closest to an established word would be Tröte or tröten — the former being a party horn the latter making the sound of a party horn.

Usually, double umlauts are not permitted in German spelling and they are shortened to one (compare Saal – Säle). However, that means you lose one way of showing that a vowel should be long (the others being adding an h — frequently undesirable — and having only a single consonant between two vowels). Because the vowel in Tröte and tröten is obviously long, the author probably tried to bring the length of the ö into writing and doubled it. I probably would have written Tröt because a short vowel would invoke a double consonant (*Trött) and the difference should therefore be clear enough. But if there is no established word there is no established spelling.

Answer 2

Jan's answer is correct. I just want to add some information:

"Trööt" is a so called Erikativ (named after the translator Erika Fuchs who introduced the phenomenon in her translations of Walt Disney's comics.)

Usually there are no words with double Umlaut in german. Here it is used in an onomatopoetic manner to create the feeling of a long hooting. (Another example for this technique might be "laaangweilig" (boring, literally: "long lasting") which in informal contexts is sometimes written with a long a to illustrate how long langweilig is in that case.)