sonority

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (weak vowel distinction) IPA^(key): /səˈnɑɹɪti/, /səˈnɔːɹɪti/
• (weak vowel merger) IPA^(key): /səˈnɑɹəti/, /səˈnɔːɹəti/

Noun

sonority (countable and uncountable, plural sonorities)

1. The property of being sonorous.
   • 1979, High Fidelity Musical America, volume 29, number 2, page 127:

     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.

2. (linguistics, phonetics) Relative loudness (of a speech sound); degree of being sonorous.
   • 2009, Ulrike Gut, Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology, Bern: Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 81:

     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.