Dictionary

murmurous en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈmɜː(ɹ).mə.ɹəs/
• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈmɜː(ɹ)m.ɹəs/

Etymology

Etymology tree English murmur Proto-Indo-European *h₃ed- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *h₃édosder.? Proto-Italic *-ŏ̄dsos? Old Latin -ōssus Latin -ōsus Old French -usbor. Middle English -ous English -ous English murmurous From murmur + -ous.

Meanings

1. Low, indistinct (of a sound); reminiscent of a murmur.
   • The seeming remoteness of its source was because of its murmurous indistinctness since it came from close-by, even from the men massed on the ship's open deck. 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 23, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.:
   • Waiting, with a glass in my hand —three girls in crimson satin pass close before me on the murmurous background of the crowded opera— 1917, William Carlos Williams, “Good Night”, in Al Que Quiere, Boston: The Four Seas Company, page 43:
   • 1959, Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, in The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable, London: Calder, 1994, p. 397, It will be the same silence, the same as ever, murmurous with muted lamentation, panting and exhaling of impossible sorrow, like distant laughter, and brief spells of hush, as of one buried before his time.
   • Throughout all the isle There was no covert, no retired cave Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves, Though scarcely heard in many a green recess. 1818–1819, John Keats, “Hyperion, a Fragment”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, →OCLC, page 193:
   • Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, 1920, Wilfred Owen, “Spring Offensive”, in Poems, London: Chatto & Windus, page 20:
   • Like as a fire, the which in hollow cave Hath long bene underkept, and down supprest, With murmurous disdaine doth inly rave, And grudge, in so streight prison to be prest, 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
   • He felt some dark presence moving irresistably upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself. 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC:
   • And if she speaks in her frail way, it is wholly to bewitch my smallest thought with a most swift radiance wherein slowly drift murmurous things divinely bright; 1921, E. E. Cummings, “Puella Mea”, in George J. Firmage, editor, Complete Poems, 1904-1962, New York: Liveright, published 1991, page 21:

Forms

Deriveds

unmurmurous · murmurously · murmurousness