ore rotundo

English

Etymology

PIE word
*h₁óh₃s

Learned borrowing from Latin ōre rotundō (“with a round mouth; hence, clear; loud”), from ōre (the ablative singular of ōs (“mouth”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁óh₃s (“mouth”)) + rotundō (“to make round”) (from rotundus (“circular, round”) (possibly from rota (“wheel”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *Hreth₂- (“to run”)) + -undus (suffix forming adjectives)) + -ō (suffix forming first-conjugation verbs)). Doublet of orotund.

Adverb

ore rotundo (comparative more ore rotundo, superlative most ore rotundo)

1. (dated) Spoken in an eloquent, clear, and confident manner.
   • 1901, Joseph Fitzgerald, Word and Phrase, A.C. McClurg & Company, page 371:

     Only when we hear the English language spoken ore rotundo — and it is an exceedingly rare experience, and fated to be ever rarer as our life grows more rapid — by some master of the art of elocution and that is a fine art truly — can one be sensible of the richness and sweetness of its tones, the gravity and majesty with which it can invest noble and solemn themes, or its graceful themes, or its graceful unbending in the Lydian mode.

   • 1911 February, Cornelia A. P. Comer, “A Letter to the Rising Generation”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     Did I not dispute a whole afternoon with another young man about the necessity for character, only to learn at the end of it that he didn't know what character was. He supposed it was 'something narrow and priggish—like what deacons used to be'. And he, mind you, was in his twenties, and claimed, ore rotundo, to be a Whitmanite, a Shavian, and a socialist.

   • 1931, Ford Madox Ford, Return to Yesterday: Reminiscences of James, Conrad, & Crane:

     The politenesses of Conrad to James and of James to Conrad were of the most impressive kind. Even if they had been addressing each other from the tribune of the Académie Française their phrases could not have been more elaborate or delivered more ore rotundo.

Adjective

ore rotundo (comparative more ore rotundo, superlative most ore rotundo)

1. (dated, of a speech) Delivered ore rotundo.
   • 1857, Daniel Parish Kidder, J. C. Fletcher, Brazil and the brazilians, portrayed in Historical and descriptive sketches, Childs & Peterson, page 181:

     They can almost all turn a sentence well, rhyme when they choose, or make a fine ore rotundo speech, echoed by the apoiados of their companions.

   • 1848, The United States Democratic Review, volume 22, J.& H.G. Langley, page 410:

     The florid verbosity which characterised the ore rotundo style of Dr. Johnson; the polished sentences of Addison, whose smoothly gliding periods might almost have been set to music—have been gradually giving way to a more nervous and rhetorically perfect style.

   • 1921, Contributions of the Lowell Historical Society, volume 2, The Society, page 297:

     He was pretty well informed on the life of the author of the book he was selling, as well as the contents of his book, and would deliver in a most ore rotundo style selections from it.

Noun

ore rotundo (uncountable)

1. (dated or historical) The practice of speaking ore rotundo.
   • 1851, Christophoros Plato Castanis, The Greek Exile, Lippincott, Grambo, & Company, page 233:

     Assuredly the ore rotundo of the Greeks, praised so much by the Latin, did not consist in such uncouth diphthongal articulations which their authors gravely assert to be imitated from dogs, sheep horses, and other brutes.

   • 1875, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to my students, Passmore and Alabaster, page 119:

     No longer are they carnal and speak as men, but a whine, a broken hum-haw, an ore rotundo, or some other graceless mode of noise-making, is adopted, to prevent all suspicion of being natural and speaking out of the abundance of the heart.

   • 2015, Shadi Bartsch, Persius, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 147:

     In this description of his own style, the only stylistic term Persius copies wholesale from Horace is the idea of the ore rotundo, the rounded expression, of AP 324.

References

• “ore rotundo”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “ore rotundo”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.