sonorous

UK/ˈsɒn.əɹ.əs/US/ˈsɑːn.ɚ.əs/

adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,866 of 15,258leans written

Sonorous means deep, full and resonant in sound. A sonorous voice, sonorous bells, sonorous prose.

It praises fullness rather than volume, and applied to prose it can be a gentle criticism — sonorous writing sounds grand and may say little. The Latin sonor means a sound, and sound, sonic and resonate are relatives.

Definitions of sonorous

1adjectivesonorousDeep, full and resonant in sound.C2
“The actor's sonorous voice filled the theatre without a microphone.”

sonorous is a quality of sound.

Where it comes from

Latin sonorus comes from sonor, a sound, from sonare, to sound. Sonnet and resonate share the root.

Latin
sonōrus
English, today
sonorous

Built from

sonor · Latin — sound

Latin sonōrus, from sonor (“sound”), early 17th century.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

sonorous in the wild

Thus, sounds that are described as more sonorous are less subject to masking by ambient noises.
Sonority hierarchy
For example, in the English word string or Italian spago the more sonorous /s/ comes before a less sonorous sound in the onset.
Sonority sequencing principle
Roberto Scandiuzzi is an Italian opera singer noted for his powerful, sonorous bass voice and stage presence.
Roberto Scandiuzzi
However he distinguished between the tonal sounds of music and the sonorous sounds of poetry, where the sonic values were generally arbitrary.
Boris Kushner (poet)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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