[f. as prec. + -NESS.] The character or quality of being sonorous.
a. 1691. Boyle, Ess. Intestine Motions of Solids, vii. Wks. 1772, I. 450. The last maker of viols, lutes &c. of whom I inquired of what age he thought such instruments, especially lutes, ought to be, to attain their full and best seasoning for sonorousness.
1777. G. Forster, Voy. round World, I. 478. We did not find that sonorousness in the Tonga-Tabboo dialect, which is prevalent in that of Taheitee.
1778. W. Pryce, Min. Cornub., 46. A small portion of Bismuth increases the brightness, hardness, and sonorousness of Tin.
1835–6. Todd’s Cycl. Anat., I. 503/1. The peculiar sonorousness which percussion frequently elicits over the left hypochondrium.
1865. Grote, Plato, I. i. 73. The colour, sonorousness,… &c., of the bodies around us.
1881. Nature, XXIV. 42. Sonorousness, under the influence of intermittent light, is a property common to all matter.
