[f. SOUND v.1]
1. Having a sound; causing, emitting, producing, a sound or sounds, esp. of a loud character; resonant, sonorous; reverberant.
Freq. in 18th-cent. poetry.
13[?]. E. E. Allit. P., A. 833. Þat nwe songe þay songen ful cler, In sounande notez a gentyl carpe.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., I. pr. ii. (1868), 8. Þe causes whennes þe sounyng wyndes moeuen and bisien þe smoþe water of þe see.
1483. Cath. Angl., 350/1. Sowndynge, argutus, sonorus.
1526. Tindale, 1 Cor. xiii. 1. I were even as soundynge brasse.
1560. Bible (Geneva), 2 Chron. xiii. 12. And beholde, this God is with vs,… & his Priests with the sounding trumpets.
1594. Marlowe & Nashe, Dido, I. 1. Both barking Scilla, and the sounding Rocks.
1636. B. Jonson, Eng. Gram., iii. Wks. (Rtldg.), 770/2. When it [the letter v] followeth a sounding vowel.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Past., V. 130. Murm’ring Billows on the sounding Shore.
1710. J. Clarke, trans. Rohault’s Nat. Philos. (1729), I. I. ii. 7. Mankind … are apt to think, that the Sound … is in the Air, or in the sounding Body as they call it.
1798. Wordsw., ‘Five years have past,’ 76. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion.
1825. T. Hook, Sayings, Ser. II. Man of Many Fr., I. 319. As the sounding horn foretels the coming-mail.
1883. Stevenson, Treas. Isl., xxvii. He went in with a sounding plunge.
b. Preceded by an adj. or adv., as clear, deep, loud sounding, etc.
c. 1325. Prose Ps. cl. 5. Herieþ hym in cymbals wele sounand.
1486. Bk. St. Albans, d iij. Looke also that thay be sonowre and well sowndyng and shil.
1500–20. Dunbar, Poems, lxxxviii. 44. Blith be thy churches, wele sownyng be thy bellis.
1560–. [see HIGH-SOUNDING a.].
1585. T. Washington, trans. Nicholay’s Voy., III. xv. 99 b. Cimbals of … cleare sounding mettall.
1592. Arden of Feversham, III. iii. 16. With that he blew an euill sounding horne.
1606. W. S., Serm. before King. With the loud sounding trumpet to rouse and araise them.
1693. [see ILL- 6].
1781. Cowper, Hope, 554. Beneath well-sounding Greek I slur a name a poet must not speak.
1801. Lusignan, IV. 28. The shores of the deep sounding main.
1845. [see FINE a. D. 2 a].
1882. Floyer, Unexpl. Balūchistan, 75. The Divine formulas of Islam are merely fine hearty-sounding words to swear in.
† c. Having a sound similar to something. Obs.–1
1563. Foxe, A. & M., 559/1. The booke … is nother English, Laten, Greke, nor Hebrue, nor Douche, but somewhat soundinge to oure English.
2. Of language, names, titles, etc.: Having a full, rich or imposing sound; high-sounding, pompous, bombastic, etc. Also transf. of writers.
1683. Soame & Dryden, trans. Boileau’s Art Poet., I. 182. Keep to your subject close in all you say; Nor for a sounding sentence ever stray.
1693. Dryden, Juvenal, Dedication (1697), p. lxxxix. We make our Authour at least appear in a Poetique Dress. We have actually made him more Sounding, and more Elegant, than he was before in English.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 26, ¶ 1. Several Persons mentioned in the Battles of Heroic Poems, who have sounding Names given them.
1775. Johnson, Tax. no Tyr., 11. Before they quit the comforts of a warm home for the sounding something which they think better.
1805. N. Nicholls, in Corr. w. Gray (1843), 36. Milton, who, he said, in parts of his poem, rolls on in sounding words that have but little meaning.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xix. IV. 321. There was a society … which assumed the sounding name of the Royal Academies Company.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., lxxii. II. 594. The orator has been apt to evade them or to deal in sounding commonplaces.
b. Of persons: Loudly demonstrative.
1828. Lytton, Pelham, III. ix. 134. The disinterested kindness and delicacy … contrasted so deeply with the hollowness of friends more sounding, alike in their profession and their creeds.
