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orotund

oro·tund

UK/ˈɒɹə(ʊ)tʌnd/ US/ˈɔː-/ uncommon obsolete

adjective

1.

ostentatiously lofty in style

  • “a man given to large talk”
  • “tumid political prose”
Synonyms
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2.

(of sounds) full and rich

  • “orotund tones”
  • “the rotund and reverberating phrase”
  • “pear-shaped vowels”
Synonyms
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Origin

PIE word *h₁óh₃s The adjective is a learned borrowing from Latin ōre rotundō (“with a round mouth; hence, clear; loud”) (whence English ore rotundo), possibly influenced by rotund (“having a curved, round, or spherical shape; (figurative) of sound: full and rich”). Ōre rotundō is composed of ōre (the ablative singular of ōs (“mouth”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁óh₃s (“mouth”)) + rotundō (the ablative singular of rotundus (“circular, round”) (possibly from rota (“wheel”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *Hreth₂- (“to run”)) + -undus (suffix forming adjectives)). The noun is derived from the adjective.

Phrases

  • ore rotundo

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.