[SOUNDING vbl. sb.1]
1. A board or screen placed over or behind a pulpit or similar structure in such a manner as to reflect the speaker’s voice towards the audience; = SOUND-BOARD 2.
1766. Entick, London, IV. 18. A carved pulpit, a veneered sounding-board.
1784. Cowper, Task, III. 21. Since pulpits fail, and sounding-boards reflect Most part an empty ineffectual sound.
1816. Gentl. Mag., LXXXVI. I. 500. The sounding-board and back are much carved; the front of the former bears the date ‘1634.’
1879. J. C. Cox, Ch. Derbysh., IV. 20. The sounding board of the pulpit, when in its old position, spoilt one of the capitals.
transf. and fig. 1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., III. VI. vi. So sings the prophetic voice; into its Convention sounding-board.
1876. ‘Ouida,’ Winter City, ix. 261. The more fanciful, feeling which makes Nature a sounding-board to echo all the cries of men.
1890. B. L. Gildersleeve, Ess. & Stud., 370. A super-elegant sounding-board of a man.
2. Mus. = SOUND-BOARD 1.
1776. Burney, Hist. Music, I. 219. The lower part of the base of the sounding board [of the lyre].
1801. Busby, Dict. Mus., Sounding-Board, in a harpsichord or piano-forte, a broad, thin board, horizontally situated, and over which the strings are distended.
1862. Catal. Internat. Exhib., Brit., II. No. 3437, Pianoforte with patent tubular sounding-board.
c. 1880. Oxford Helps Study Bible, 134. [The] ‘dulcimer’ being an instrument formed of strings tightly stretched … over a rectangular sounding-board or box.
