Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having or producing sound.
  • adjective Having or producing a full, deep, or rich sound.
  • adjective Impressive in style of speech.
  • adjective Produced in the manner of a sonorant.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Giving sound, as when struck; resonant; sounding.
  • Giving a loud or full-volumed sound; loud-sounding: as, a sonorous voice.
  • Having an imposing sound; high-sounding: as, a sonorous style.
  • Sonant: as, the vowels are sonorous.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Giving sound when struck; resonant.
  • adjective Loud-sounding; giving a clear or loud sound.
  • adjective Yielding sound; characterized by sound; vocal; sonant.
  • adjective Impressive in sound; high-sounding.
  • adjective (Med.) Sonant; vibrant; hence, of sounds produced in a cavity, deep-toned.
  • adjective (Physics) figures formed by the vibrations of a substance capable of emitting a musical tone, as when the bow of a violin is drawn along the edge of a piece of glass or metal on which sand is strewed, and the sand arranges itself in figures according to the musical tone. Called also acoustic figures.
  • adjective (Med.) a tumor which emits a clear, resonant sound on percussion.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Capable of giving out a deep, resonant sound.
  • adjective Full of sound and rich, as in language or verse.
  • adjective Wordy or grandiloquent.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective full and loud and deep

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin sonōrus, from sonor, sound, from sonāre, to sound; see swen- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin sonorus from sonor sound.

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Examples

  • If the Planetary Society tends to exhort its more than 50,000 members in sonorous terms, conversation in the carriage house was speculative and playful.

    Across the Universe 2009

  • If the Planetary Society tends to exhort its more than 50,000 members in sonorous terms, conversation in the carriage house was speculative and playful.

    Across the Universe 2009

  • In some den of an apartment I will no doubt find the cockroach of enlightenment, a supralapsarian dispensationalist with whom I will share a love of Yeats and Brahms, and we will debate in sonorous and unending Spanish sentences of desultory, copious punctuation.

    Changes and Vicissitudes of the Unexamined Life « Unknowing 2010

  • None of which was made better by that infuriating custom, whereby the waiter, after delivering the plates, stands and describes what you are about to eat in sonorous and interminable phrases.

    The Smartest Hotel in the World Julian Fellowes 2010

  • If the Planetary Society tends to exhort its more than 50,000 members in sonorous terms, conversation in the carriage house was speculative and playful.

    Across the Universe 2009

  • It would not be a very dramatic story had he said, in sonorous tones, "25 percent of our 8th grade students are 'below basic' in reading, and that figure includes students who are learning English and students with disabilities."

    Ravitch on how wrong 'Superman' really is Valerie Strauss 2010

  • The third canto to Polwhele's poem describes a Eastern-style hunt with a Nabob, alluding specifically to Somervile's treatment of the subject in "sonorous lines"

    Notes 2002

  • Now Governor Lowe, with courtly manner and in sonorous tones, took up his part in the drama, beginning with the prisoner's alleged reckless youth as brought out in Miss Madison's testimony, mainly.

    Hagar's Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice Pauline Elizabeth 1902

  • "Here, the _Theseus_ -- here, the _Vanguard_;" as he spoke each name sonorous, --

    Ride to the Lady And Other Poems Helen Gray Cone 1896

  • The ear, whose conformation fits it to receive the various impulses of air, diversely modified, communicates to the brain the shocks or sensations; these breed the perception of sound, and generate the idea of sonorous bodies: it is this that constitutes _hearing_.

    The System of Nature, Volume 1 Paul Henri Thiry Holbach 1756

Comments

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  • I love the sound of this word, coincidentally.

    August 30, 2007

  • Another example to add: "Cassie closed her eyes, allowing the spiritual to coil through the her unquiet soul, and by the time the last echo of the last syllable had died away, she knew that no being, supreme or otherwise, had ever received a more sonorous send-off to the dark, icy gates of oblivion." From p. 355 of Morrow, James (1994). Towing Jehovah. New York: Harcourt.

    June 23, 2012