[a. F. sonorité, or ad. L. sonōritas, f. sonōr-us: see -ITY.] The quality of being sonorous: a. Of sounds.
1623. Cockeram, I. Sonoritie, shrilnesse, loudnesse.
1864. Reader, 16 Jan., 86/1. An amount of sonority … ten times as much as the ten first fiddles of the Brussels Conservatoire.
1874. Hullah, Speaking Voice, 2. We reduce to a minimum the sonority of our vowels.
1883. Grove’s Dict. Music, III. 426/2. This depression of the first string, if a thick string be used, is not unfavourable to sonority.
b. Of things or places.
1879. Grove’s Dict. Music, I. 10. The salle [of the theatre] is said to be deficient in sonority.
1883. M. Schuyler, in Harper’s Mag., Nov., 886/2. The sonority of this reservoir is expected materially to re-enforce the volume of tone.
1897. Trans. Amer. Pediatric Soc., IX. 19. The sonority of the chest, and the peculiar character of the respiration.
c. Of speech or diction.
1876. Contemp. Rev., XXVIII. 240. Milton’s proficiency on the organ is hardly to be forgotten in considering the richness and sonority of his language.
1881. Athenæum, No. 2811. 328/2. The great virtue of the regular sonnet … is a certain sonority.
1883. Ld. Lytton, Life Lytton, II. 100. The fine sonority of the verse in Tamberlain.
