Dictionary

sonority en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /səˈnɑɹɪti/ weak vowel distinction
• /səˈnɑɹəti/ weak vowel merger
• /səˈnɔːɹɪti/ weak vowel distinction
• (Southern-England) audio
• /səˈnɔːɹəti/ weak vowel merger

Etymology

From sonor(ous) + -ity, from French sonorité, from Latin sonōritās.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The property of being sonorous.
   • Another quality that bothers me is Brendel's inconsistent sonority. The treble is hard and pingy; the midrange is weighed down with a booming bass. 1979, High Fidelity Musical America, volume 29, number 2, page 127:
2. (countable, uncountable) Relative loudness (of a speech sound); degree of being sonorous.
   • It can be seen that vowels have the highest sonority of all phonemes in English, with low vowels being even more sonorous than high vowels. 2009, Ulrike Gut, Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology, Bern: Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 81:

Forms