Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The act of one that sounds.
- n. A probe of the environment for scientific observation.
- n. A measured depth of water.
- n. Water shallow enough for depth measurements to be taken by a hand line. Often used in the plural.
- adj. Emitting a full sound; resonant.
- adj. Noisy but with little significance.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act or process of measuring the depth of anything; exploration, as with a plummet and line, or a sound.
- n. The descent of a whale or of a fish to the bottom after being harpooned or hooked.
- n. plural The depth of water in rivers, harbors, along shores, and even in the open seas, which is ascertained in the operation of sounding. The term is also used to signify any place or part of the ocean where a deep sounding-line will reach the bottom; also, the kind of ground or bottom where the line reaches. Soundings on English and American charts are expressed in fathoms, except in some harbor-charts where they are in feet. See
deep-sea . - n. In comparatively shoal water: said of a whale in the Arctic Ocean. Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, or in bays, lagoons, etc., whose depths may be readily fathomed.
- n. The act of producing a sound or a noise; also, a sound or a noise produced; specifically, in music, compare sounds, intransitive verb, 2.
- Causing or producing sound; sonorous; resounding; making a noise.
- Having a magnificent or lofty sound; hence, bombastic: as, mere sounding phrases.
- n. In astronomy, the investigation of the probable distance of the boundaries of the stellar universe by enumerating the number of stars visible in different regions in the field of a given telescope or on a photographic plate.
Wiktionary
- n. The action of the verb to sound.
- n. Testing with a probe or sonde.
- n. A measured depth of water.
- n. The act of inserting of a thin metal rod into the urethra of the penis for medical or sexual purposes
- n. Any place or part of the ocean, or other water, where a sounding line will reach the bottom.
- n. The sand, shells, etc. brought up by the sounding lead when it has touched bottom.
- adj. Emitting a sound.
- v. present participle of sound.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Making or emitting sound; hence, sonorous.
- n. The act of one who, or that which, sounds (in any of the senses of the several verbs).
- n. measurement by sounding; also, the depth so ascertained.
- n. Any place or part of the ocean, or other water, where a sounding line will reach the bottom; -- usually in the plural.
- n. The sand, shells, or the like, that are brought up by the sounding lead when it has touched bottom.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the act of measuring depth of water (usually with a sounding line)
- adj. appearing to be as specified; usually used as combining forms
- adj. making or having a sound as specified; used as a combining form
- n. a measure of the depth of water taken with a sounding line
- adj. having volume or deepness
Examples
“Israelis insist the post-1967 housing developments are mere "Jewish neighborhoods," a term sounding benign and residential.”
“I know so little of my father, I said cautiously, the name sounding unfamiliar on my tongue, not wanting to press, knowing his loss still pained Grandfather.”
““Hey, Channella,” I say, my voice sounding faraway and poisonous, her name sounding as ridiculous as it really is.”
“He whispered, the word sounding like the blackest curse of the hells.”
““The Comte du Lac,” he answered, the name sounding familiar.”
“SKIP LOESCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president began his term sounding like a moderate, saying things Democrats could applaud.”
“The late-19th-century painter Frederick Stuart Church was burdened with a name sounding too similar to that of the Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church, who built the Moorish folly Olana in Hudson, N.Y. Even on museum Web sites, the men's works are now occasionally attributed to the wrong Church.”
“The recording itself is weird -- very hollow and thin sounding, which is odd for a record like this.”
“The following experiments of a simple kind will serve to convince those who may not have given much attention to the subject that sound is due to movements of some object, which we term the sounding body, strictly that which starts the vibrations by its own movements or vibrations.”
“He said he heard at least three shots, which he described as sounding like firecrackers or a BB gun.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sounding’.
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Whaleworthy & Piratical Words
A list of favorite nautical words to be sprinkled liberally throughout speech for piratical or Melvillian effect.
batten down, back and fill, beamy, baulking, beckets, bilge, bold shore, boomjumper, breaker, larboard, abaft, ash breeze and 156 more...
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Brochettes of Random Palavery
Another of my random palavery lists for words or phrases that haven't yet found a place in one or more of my other lists.
nonexclusivity, adaptationist, paxillin, adduct, unblushingly cribbed, ptomaïne, microsievert, millisievert, too big to jail, tastemaker, tinsmithing, Nimzo-Indian and 1616 more...
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Maritime
Nautilusty
abaft, navalis, coastal, nautical, marine, sea, sea-going, Occident, Orient, trans-Atlantic, amidships, transom and 28 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sounding.
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