Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Pompous and bombastic: orotund talk.
- adj. Full in sound; sonorous: orotund tones.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In elocution, characterized by strength, fullness, richness, and clearness; open, mellow, rich, and musical: applied to the voice or manner of utterance.
- Pompous; self-satisfied; inflated: applied to a style of utterance.
- n. A deep, full voice.
Wiktionary
- adj. Characterized by fullness, clarity, strength, and smoothness of sound.
- adj. Pompous; bombastic.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Characterized by fullness, clearness, strength, and smoothness; ringing and musical; -- said of the voice or manner of utterance.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. (of sounds) full and rich
- adj. ostentatiously lofty in style
Etymologies
- From alteration of Latin ōre rotundō, with a round mouth : ōre, ablative of ōs, mouth; see ōs- in Indo-European roots + rotundō, ablative of rotundus, round; see rotund.
Examples
“Principal among such figures employed by amateurs are the long complex metaphors and similes in which epic poetry delights; the figure of apostrophe, too, is much affected by tyros, because it affords them opportunity to coin orotund phrases concerning the irony of fate, the haplessness of true lovers, and kindred favorite topics.”
Short Story Writing A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story
“Yet France is rarely averse to padding out sentences with an unnecessary "perforce" or "hitherto"; and it's hard not to conclude that within this orotund, romantic novel there's a much leaner, more elliptical account of agrarian angst fighting to get out.”
“Many translations of his work into English exist, from the slightly orotund, Victorian versions composed by the Bengali Nobel poet-laureate Rabindranath Tagore in the early 20th century to the Americanized versions in the 1980s produced by the poet Robert Bly.”
“His mid-20th-century senators certainly speak better than those serving today, most of whom, during debate, could scarcely pronounce, let alone deploy, its orotund courtesies and barbs.”
A young reader discovers the meaning of paranoia in the political novels of Allen Drury
“He shouted and whispered, swooped from orotund formality to gutter lingo, mashing Sanskrit with flapper slang always in confident pronouncements and warnings: "The safety valve of this age for repressed, suppressed emotion is hooch, sex and drugs," he declared in 1927.”
“Hortensius went next and did his best, but those great orotund purple passages for which he was so famous belonged to another setting—and, in truth, another era.”
“I know you enjoy orotund grandiloquence and righteous insult.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“You have said with finality what needed to be said about the ignorant, misleading, bloated, orotund, bombastic phrase-making of Edgar and Daley.”
“Oscar revelled in the orotund, slightly archaic turns of phrase the actor employed.”
“But Henry, even in white tie, rotund and orotund, always had a twinkle in his eye.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘orotund’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Vocab
goat rodeo, fardel, quotidian, deportment, opprobrium, deracinated, inculcate, desultory, orotund, chivvy, diktat, casuistry and 24 more...
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Necessary Apostrophe’s List
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desultory
Please keep this list free of non-desultory words. Thank you.
pusillanimous, fuselage, obsequiously, necromancy, orotund, absquatulate, tooth, daylight, conceivable
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