mellifluous

From Latin mellifluus (“flowing like honey”), from mel (“honey”) + fluō (“flow”). Compare superfluous and fluid, from same root, and with dulcet (“sweet speech”), alternative Latinate term with a similar meaning.

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• (US) IPA^(key): /məˈlɪflu.əs/, IPA^(key): /mɛˈlɪflu.əs/

mellifluous (comparative more mellifluous, superlative most mellifluous)

1. Flowing like honey.
   • 1671: Paradise Regained by John Milton

     Though in heaven the trees / Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines / Yield nectar; though from off the boughs each morn / We brush mellifluous dews, and find the ground / Cover'd with pearly grain...

2. Sweet, smooth and musical; pleasant to hear (generally used of a person's voice, tone or writing style).
   • 1671: Paradise Regained by John Milton

     ...Socrates...Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth / Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools / Of Academicks old and new...

   • 1853: Sir Egerton Brydges, "Life of Milton"

     No verses can be more mellifluous than Petrarch's: something of this will perhaps be attributed to the softness of the Italian language; but the English tongue is also capable of it, however obstinately Johnson may have pronounced otherwise.

   • 2016: "Richard Ashcroft: These People review – nothing brutal from a mellifluous foghorn" by Rachel Aroesti

     Certainly, he returns explicitly to the sound of Urban Hymns on his fourth solo album: neat, sad strings, unhurried percussion and his mellifluous foghorn of a voice.

• (Sweet and smooth style): birdsweet, dulcet, euphonious, sweet-flowing

• mellifluousness

• melliloquent
• superfluous