sonority

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Her voice, in compass from F to F, was a clear, silvery soprano, and possessed in its low notes something of the delicious quality of the contralto, that bell-like freshness and sonority which is one of the most delightful characteristics of the human voice.

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Definitions (6)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun The quality or state of being sonorous; resonance.
  2. noun A sound.
  3. noun Linguistics The degree to which a speech sound is like a vowel. Plosives have the least sonority and vowels have the most.

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Examples (50)

  • There are dilettanti who pretend that at a concert the best way to enjoy Beethoven's last works—where the sonority is defective—is to stop the ears and read the score. —  Musicians of To-Day
  • I think the value, for instance, of Jan Garbarek's and my playing together is not that we are cross-referencing styles, but that we are instinctively learning from each other's sonority, and ways of handling music-making.
  • His instrument (an old classical guitar that he calls "Trigger") is famous for the hole he has worn into its face by decades of picking, and its distinctive twang has the same kind of sonority as the sharp nasal sound of his voice. —  The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed
  • This instrument has rapidly become a legend, and is still used today, altough samples have replaced the real thing so that very often music producers use huge sample libraries or hardware keyboards / workstations to achieve this kind of sonority, and often the result is a cold and 'dead' sound, with no vitality, no warmth, nothing that even compares to the unpredictability and genuineness of the real thing. —  AvaxHome RSS:
  • The album exudes sensual sonority, particularly on the tracks "Book of Memories," "Hypnotize Me" and "Vapor." —  AvaxHome RSS:
 

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Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = French sonorité = Spanish sonoridad = Portuguese sonoridade = Italian sonorità, from Late Latin sonorita (t-)s, fullness of sound, from Latin sonorus, sounding, sonorous: see sonorous.
 

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/səˈnɑrəti/
by American Heritage

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