soundless

English

Etymology

sound + -less

Adjective

soundless (comparative more soundless, superlative most soundless)

  1. Without sound.
    • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act V, Scene 1,
      Cassius. [] for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,
      And leave them honeyless.
      Antony. Not stingless too.
      Brutus. O yes, and soundless too;
      For you have stol’n their buzzing, Antony,
      And very wisely threat before you sting.
    • 1663, Robert Boyle, Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Naturall Philosophy, Oxford: Richard Davis, Essay 2, p. 49,
      The Psalmist observes, That the Heavens declare the glory of God: And indeed, they celebrate his Praises, though with a soundless Voice, yet with so loud a one [] to our intellectual Ears, that he scruples not to affirm, that There is no Speech nor Language where their voice is not heard []
    • 1797, Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, London: T. Cadell Junior & W. Davies, Volume 2, Chapter 7, p. 225,
      The whole building, with its dark windows and soundless avenues, had an air strikingly forlorn and solitary.
    • 1839, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume 5, September 1839, p. 145,
      During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hang oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country []
    • 1896, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, London: Grant Richards, 1898, XXXVIII, p. 55,
      The names of men blow soundless by,
      My fellows’ and my own.
  2. Not capable of being sounded or fathomed.
    • 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 80,
      Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
      Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
    • 1614, Christopher Brooke, The Ghost of Richard the Third, London: L. Lisle, “The Legend of Richard the Third,”
      Nor Wits, nor Chronicles could ere containe,
      The Hell-deepe Reaches, of my soundlesse Braine.
    • 1881, Walt Whitman, “Out from Behind This Mask (To Confront a Portrait)” in Leaves of Grass, London: David Bogue, p. 296,
      This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea;

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

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