Monday, September 12, 2016

Interesting words: Orotund

Definition: Orotund is an adjective with two quite different meanings. When it describes a person's voice it means having a full, strong sound.  When it describes a speech it means pompous or bombastic.

Pronunciation: Ohr, ,uh, tund.  Rhymes with more, uh, gunned.

Origin: According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, orotund comes from Latin Ore Rotundo meaning "with round mouth".

Why use it?  I like the first use much more than the second; we already have words like bombastic. But no one word has all the meanings of orotund as applied to a voice.

Examples: Most of the examples I could find online were of the second meaning of the word, but it's easy to come up with good uses of the first:

His orotund voice masked the vapidity of his views
or

While his orotund voice got him some auditions, his utter lack of acting ability doomed his career. 



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