Francis HackettVirgil Thomson
Did you know?
An experiment: first breathe in deeply, then try to sing the strongest, lowest note that you can, at the utmost floor of your register. How lovely. Now, what vowel did you sing for your one-syllable song? We’ll bet you a skillet full of bacon it was o. Why? Shaping one’s mouth into an o-shape is pretty much a surefire way to produce an orotund or resonant sound, that is, one that is full, strong, and loud. Try the same exercise with a long e sound, as in sleep, and see (or hear) what we mean. Orotund comes from the Latin phrase ore rotundo, literally meaning "with round mouth." It was adopted into English in the late 18th century to describe the strength of one’s vocal delivery but has since picked up an additional sense of "pompous" or "bombastic" to describe inflated speech that may be full of sound and fury, yet signifies nothing.
Examples of orotund in a Sentence
Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2022
Novoselov had a boisterous, orotund way of talking that even the interpreter seemed to have trouble making sense of.
—Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2021
Cite this Entry
“Orotund.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orotund. Accessed 25 Jun. 2026.
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