soundless
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
- (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA(key): /saʊndləs/
- Hyphenation: sound‧less
Adjective[edit]
soundless (comparative more soundless, superlative most soundless)
- Without sound.
- 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
- Cassius. […] for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,
And leave them honeyless.
Antony. Not stingless too.
Brutus. O yes, and soundless too;
For you have stol’n their buzzing, Antony,
And very wisely threat before you sting.
- 1663, Robert Boyle, Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Naturall Philosophy[1], Oxford: Richard Davis, Essay 2, page 49:
- The Psalmist observes, That the Heavens declare the glory of God: And indeed, they celebrate his Praises, though with a soundless Voice, yet with so loud a one […] to our intellectual Ears, that he scruples not to affirm, that There is no Speech nor Language where their voice is not heard […]
- 1797, Ann Radcliffe, chapter 7, in The Italian[2], volume 2, London: T. Cadell Junior & W. Davies, page 225:
- The whole building, with its dark windows and soundless avenues, had an air strikingly forlorn and solitary.
- 1839 September, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, volume 5, page 145:
- During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hang oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country […]
- 1896, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad[3], London: Grant Richards, published 1898, XXXVIII, p. 55:
- The names of men blow soundless by,
My fellows’ and my own.
- 1984 August 18, Pam Mitchell, “We Must Not Silence Our Lives”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 6, page 8:
- All day a woman across the room from me has been rolling up her pages scroll-like and smoothing them out as soundless tears cascade down her face.
- Not capable of being sounded or fathomed.
- Synonyms: bottomless, depthless, fathomless, unfathomable
- 1609, William Shakespeare, “(please specify the sonnet number)”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […][4], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:
- Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
- 1614, Christopher Brooke, The Ghost of Richard the Third, London: L. Lisle, “The Legend of Richard the Third,”[5]
- Nor Wits, nor Chronicles could ere containe,
- The Hell-deepe Reaches, of my soundlesse Braine.
- 1881, Walt Whitman, “Out from Behind This Mask (To Confront a Portrait)”, in Leaves of Grass[6], London: David Bogue, page 296:
- This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea;
Derived terms[edit]
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
without sound
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