a. [f. SONG sb. + -LESS.]
1. Devoid of song; not singing.
c. 1805. H. Kirke White, Nelsoni Mors, 13. The woods and storied haunts Of my not songless boyhood.
1832. J. Bree, St. Herbert’s Isle, 83. The thrush sits songless on the mistletoe.
1866. Meredith, Vittoria, vii. Before he had quitted the court, he had sunk into songless gloom.
1882. ‘Ouida,’ Maremma, I. 192. The clear voices burst over the silence of the songless moor.
2. Ornith. Lacking the power of song.
1825. Waterton, Wand. S. Amer. (1882), 26. Chiefly in the dry Savannas, you see a songless yawariciri still lovelier than the last.
c. 1882. Cassell’s Nat. Hist., IV. 109. The Mesomyodi, or Songless Birds.
1895. Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 277/1. In the cases of the so-called songless birds there is often no attempt to describe the notes.
Hence Songlessly adv.
a. 1849. J. C. Mangan, Poems (1859), 119. If the saunterer-by songlessly pass Through the long grass.
1856. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., IV. V. xix. § 6. All the while the veritable peasants are kneeling songlessly.
