Adjective

(en adjective)

Capable of giving out a deep, resonant sound.

* {{quote-book

, year= 1837 , year_published= , author= , by= , title= , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=DfIsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA162 , original= , chapter= Mercury de Breze , section= , isbn= , edition= , publisher= , location= New York , editor= , volume= 2 , page= 162 , passage= The Oath is redacted ; pronounced aloud by President Bailly, — and indeed in such a sonorous tone, that the cloud of witnesses, even outdoors, hear it, and bellow response to it. }}

Full of sound and rich, as in language or verse.

* Addison

The Italian opera, amidst all the meanness and familiarity of the thoughts, has something beautiful and sonorous in the expression.

* E. Everett

There is nothing of the artificial Johnsonian balance in his style. It is as often marked by a pregnant brevity as by a sonorous amplitude.

Wordy or grandiloquent.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Containing, consisting of, or producing harsh, unpleasant or discordant sounds.

* 2006 , Everett True, Nirvana: The Biography , Da Capo Press (2007), ISBN 9780306815546, page 58:

The first time I saw the NYC quartet [Sonic Youth] was in 1983 for their Confusion Is Sex album, when they filled The Venue in Victoria, London with a cacophonous maelstrom of mangled sounds that still reverberates, more than two decades on.

* 2011 , Fern Michaels, To Taste the Wine , Kensington Books (2011), ISBN 9780758242747, page 153:

and the cacophonous clatter of pots and pans accompanied the vociferous complaints of the ship's cook.

* 2012 , Michael D. Breed & Janice Moore, Animal Behavior , Academic Press (2012), ISBN 9780123725813, page 199 (image caption):

A colony of pelicans can be cacophonous .