sallymn: (words 6)
Sally M ([personal profile] sallymn) wrote in [community profile] 1word1day2025-01-19 02:15 pm

Sunday Word: Stertorous

stertorous [stur-ter-uhs]

adjective:
1 characterized by heavy snoring
2 characterized by a harsh snoring or gasping sound

Examples:

During the five days of Wally's visit, I twice asked Sally how things were going. The first time - this was two seconds before she fell into sleep, leaving me in bed listening to stertorous Wally - she said, "Fine. I'm glad I'm doing this. You're magnificent to put up with it. I'm sorry I'm cranky... zzzzzzz." (Richard Ford, How Was It To Be Dead?, The New Yorker, August 2006)

In the mid-19th century, the horse-pulled calliope, a instrument that emits stertorous whistles via steam power, also found a regular place in the circus band. (Jennifer Gersten, A Brief History of Circus Music, WQXR, June 2017)

As the martyred poet Chenier, Jonas Kaufmann transforms the traditionally stertorous 'spinto' tenor sound into a thing of wondrous handsomeness, modulating tone, vowel and colour with immaculate poise and musical intelligence. (Peter McCallum, Andrea Chenier: Moments of artistry and sheer vocal beauty, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 2019)

The patient was now breathing stertorously and it was easy to see that he had suffered some terrible injury. (Bram Stoker, Dracula)

But the address was exactly right; it breathed stertorous, beef-and-beer, prayer-book loyalty in every line. (Hulbert Footner, Entertaining a Prince)


(click to enlarge)

Origin:

'characterized by a deep snoring,' 1802, with -ous + Modern Latin stertor, from Latin stertere 'to snore,' a derivative of sternuere 'to sneeze,' from PIE imitative pst-, to render the sound of sneezing. (Online Etymology Dictionary)


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