cacophonous
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Ancient Greek κακός (kakós, “bad”) + φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]cacophonous (comparative more cacophonous, superlative most cacophonous)
- Containing, consisting of, or producing harsh, unpleasant or discordant sounds.
- Synonyms: inharmonious, unmusical, unmelodic
- Antonyms: harmonious, musical, euphonious
- 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Texan”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 46:
- […] Huple had rescued them just in time by seizing the controls back from Dobbs and leveling the ship out almost as suddenly right back in the middle of the buffeting layer of cacophonous flak from which they had escaped successfully only a moment before.
- 1993, Mike Leigh, Naked, spoken by Brian (Peter Wight):
- The good thing about this job is that it gives me time and space to contemplate the future at my leisure, whilst the city sleeps, free from the cacophonous curiosity of the hoi polloi.
- 2006, Everett True, Nirvana: The Biography, Da Capo Press, published 2007, →ISBN, page 58:
- The first time I saw the NYC quartet [Sonic Youth] was in 1983 for their Confusion Is Sex album, when they filled The Venue in Victoria, London with a cacophonous maelstrom of mangled sounds that still reverberates, more than two decades on.
- 2012, Michael D. Breed & Janice Moore, Animal Behavior, Academic Press (2012), →ISBN, page 199 (image caption):
- A colony of pelicans can be cacophonous.
Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds
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