Did you know?
The name of the fruit plum goes back to Old English. During the 18th century, the word plum became a delectable ingredient in the language. The word for the sweet, juicy fruit denoted such things as a fortune of 100,000 pounds, a rich person, and, by the early 19th century, anything desirable. The related adjective plummy blossomed in the early 18th century with the meaning "full of plums" and had branched out as an adjective for desirable things by the century's end. By the 19th century, it was being used to describe rich, mellow voices. The sweetness of the word did eventually sour, however, when people began to use it to describe stilted or affected speech, as in "the teacher used a plummy voice when he talked to the students' parents."
Examples of plummy in a Sentence
Elin McCoy, Fortune Europe, 11 May 2024
These days, clusters of plummy Concords, oval autumn royals and dusky kyohos are decorating dinner tables, doubling as cornucopian decorations and low-effort snacks.
—New York Times, 28 Feb. 2024
Reviewing a collection of Tom Wolfe’s journalism, Hitchens deplored Wolfe’s affectations and his plummy conservative politics.
—Dwight Garner, New York Times, 1 Jan. 2024
Onstage at the Duke of York’s Theatre, no plummy riposte gets the better of her.
—Peter Marks, Washington Post, 6 Dec. 2023
See all Example Sentences for plummy 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'plummy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near plummy
Cite this Entry
“Plummy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plummy. Accessed 27 Jul. 2024.
Copy Citation
Share