What's the difference between mellifluous and sonorous?

Mellifluous


Definition:

  • (a.) Flowing as with honey; smooth; flowing sweetly or smoothly; as, a mellifluous voice.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I wish he were alive so that I could hear his mellifluous voice at the other end of the phone offering me congratulations in his courtly way."
  • (2) A blackbird is broadcasting its mellifluous song, a squirrel runs up a nearby tree and surprisingly, given that we are in central London, we can both hear a woodpecker knocking.
  • (3) Watson answered in a mellifluous computerised voice – think Stephen Hawking with extra zing – and in a neat visual trick its screen avatar changed colour depending on how sure it was about each answer.
  • (4) Gassman had started out, quite promisingly, as a sportsman in his hometown of Genoa, but quickly decided to put his athletic prowess, good looks and prodigiously mellifluous speaking voice to work in the theatre.
  • (5) He goes after its baffling, mellifluous names – Smintheus, Agyieus, Platanistius, Theoxenius – his pencil languidly scratches, in a whimsical mock-invocation of Apollo from 1975.
  • (6) On Renaissance, you'll find politics, war parables, mellifluous metaphors, a keen sense of humour and a brilliant backdrop of Tribe-ish beats by himself and the deceased J Dilla.
  • (7) It's momentarily confusing since Rob Brydon shares the same mellifluous Welsh sing-song as his most famous character, Uncle Bryn from Gavin and Stacey – a man with such a joyous enthusiasm for life that even reciting a shopping list he can sound like he's just discovered the secret of eternal life.
  • (8) Speaking from her Paris flat, 54 years on, Riva's voice is still as mellifluous and as gently mesmerising.
  • (9) They had no beer licence, but I got a cup of coffee and the owner told me in rich, mellifluous Irish how the place was normally teeming with Gaeilgeoirí (Irish speakers) but because it was a sunny day no one wanted to be skulking underground and so I was the only customer.
  • (10) The quartet then plays a private concert: a mellifluous account of the finale from Dvorák's American quartet, to which one boy dances as though to a pop song and another plays air violin.
  • (11) If anything, in fact, he's better looking than he used to be; he has an actor's mellifluous voice, and often used to be likened to Bill Nighy, but with shorter hair and a radiant complexion he looks more like a distinguished architect, say, or a classical conductor.
  • (12) That breakthrough arrived when Xavi found the centre-half with a corner-kick in the 73rd minute as Spain showed they need not impress solely with mellifluous passing.
  • (13) Recently, I tried the experiment of getting Google’s pedestrian directions pumped into my earphones (the mellifluous recorded woman’s voice interrupting Queens of the Stone Age’s mellifluous racket just before each intersection) in order to get me from a London Overground station to an unfamiliar pub 15 minutes’ walk away.
  • (14) It appears everywhere on gastropub menus ("proper pork pie", "proper mash"), in one-up-from-McDonald's burger joints ("proper hamburgers", promises the London chain Byron), and in the mellifluously matey warbling of Jamie Oliver munching a Vietnamese banh minh in an East End market ("That is a proper, proper sandwich"), and his own dish names: "Proper Bloke's Sausage Fusilli", "Roast of Incredible Game Birds with Proper Polenta".
  • (15) His late father, Chaim, born in Belfast, was a general who was Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993; his uncle, Abba Eban, its famously mellifluous foreign minister.

Sonorous


Definition:

  • (a.) Giving sound when struck; resonant; as, sonorous metals.
  • (a.) Loud-sounding; giving a clear or loud sound; as, a sonorous voice.
  • (a.) Yielding sound; characterized by sound; vocal; sonant; as, the vowels are sonorous.
  • (a.) Impressive in sound; high-sounding.
  • (a.) Sonant; vibrant; hence, of sounds produced in a cavity, deep-toned; as, sonorous rhonchi.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Best friends since school, they sound like an old married couple, finishing each other's sentences, constantly referring to the other by name and making each other laugh; deep sonorous, belly laughs.
  • (2) The value of sonor biparietal cephalometry and serum oxytocinase that we have obtained with weekly simultaneous determinations in 14 females with normal pregnancy and in 5 with pathological pregnancy, from 24th to 39th week, show a statical positive relation.
  • (3) And Matthew McConaughey will do a sonorous voice over about the evolution of human endeavour on the trailer.
  • (4) And the winner of the £25,000 prize – Glaswegian Susan Philipsz , whose piece consisted of a recording of her soft and sonorous voice singing a traditional Scottish lament over the River Clyde – remembered it the morning after just as an artist who works in sound ought: "It was a surreal experience.
  • (5) But the voice is a deep sonorous thing that crackles like dry leather, and he can still draw blood with one deadpan line.
  • (6) Sonorant and voicing features were transmitted well for the A condition, but features related to high-frequency and place cues were not.
  • (7) The author has conducted 95 subtotal reconstructive laryngectomies in the period of 1976 to 1984, with the following effects: decannulation, with the mean time of 6 weeks in 82%; deglutition without difficulties, after the third postoperative month in 90% of operated patients; the restoration of phonetics with sonorous-understandable speech in 11%.
  • (8) It all began at two minutes to six on May Day last year, when the sonorous tones of Sir David Attenborough combined with the equally unmistakable call of the cuckoo, heralding the start of Tweet of the Day .
  • (9) My eldest son dropped his dummy like a stone when warned by our Italian dentist, in a sonorous baritone: "You don't give up your dummy, you look like this …" (pantomiming horrible buck teeth).
  • (10) It has also been argued that the sonority (or vowel-likeness) of the consonant closest to the peak, which is a function of its phonetic class, may have an effect on the strength of boundaries determined by the hierarchical division of the syllable (e.g., Treiman, 1984).
  • (11) Prefiguring attitudes now associated with John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman, Robinson succeeded in breaking through what he called the "sonorous drivel" of politicians, of whom he once said: "It's impossible to make the bastards reply to a straight question."
  • (12) Salient features in the auditory mode for the CI group were duration, sonorancy, and some manner attributes, while the HA subjects used these features as well as sibilancy and voicing.
  • (13) Velopharyngeal sonorous snoring is best treated with uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP).
  • (14) In May, it hosts Nuits Sonores , a five-day (and night) festival of electronic music and art, which sees hundreds of locations across the city transformed into creative stages (13-17 May).
  • (15) In a slow but sonorous voice, the biblical cadences rolled out, and the crowd would sway with them, and punctuate them with the answering calls that are the special feature of Negro churches.
  • (16) A high court judge has sonorously intoned that Putin is not very nice.
  • (17) What's excruciating is seeing your father lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying in a pool of blood.” Charles Ryan, director of Arizona’s department of corrections, said in a statement: “Once the inmate was sedated, other than sonorous respiration, or snoring, he did not grimace or make any further movement.
  • (18) These values confirm the fact that, although the new voice achieved through reconstructive laryngectomy surgery is less sonorous, it allows for perfectly understandable, socially acceptable speech.
  • (19) Other times it is groups of young men who improvise platforms upon the irregular surfaces of the rooftop and talk and laugh with sonorous cries, feeling perhaps, at this height, somewhat liberated from the burdensome human environment, and whose demeanour is tinged with familiarity by their moving around in shirtsleeves – as on a rooftop no one is ashamed of exhibiting themselves dressed like this.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest View from the rooftop of Brasil 42 today.
  • (20) Not according to some Obama administration voices and rather too many sonorous broadcasters and upmarket commentators.