Word.ws English Dictionary

sound out

sound out verb: to question and listen attentively in order to discover a person's opinion, intent, or preference, especially by using indirect conversational remarks.

Verb

sound out (third-person singular simple present sounds out, present participle sounding out, simple past and past participle sounded out)

  1. (transitive) To question and listen attentively in order to discover a person's opinion, intent, or preference, especially by using indirect conversational remarks.
    • You'll have to ask them—sound them out.1918, Peter B. Kyne, chapter 24, in The Valley of the Giants
    Synonyms:
    to feel out, to check out
  2. (transitive) To pronounce a word or phrase by articulating each of its letters or syllables slowly in sequence.
  3. (intransitive) To speak or sing loudly, to call out.
    • Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!c. 1855, Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, stanza 9

sound out meaning in Sanskrit and Vietnamese

sound out in Sanskrit

to sound out, exult
नु nu

sound out in Vietnamese

to question and listen attentively to discover a person's opinion
thăm dò
to pronounce a word or phrase by articulating each of its letters
ráp vần
to speak or sing loudly
kêu vang

Synonyms of sound out

  • to feel out
  • to check out

Forms of sound out

third-person singular presentsounds out
present participlesounding out
past participlesounded out
pastsounded out

Questions about sound out

What does sound out mean?
Sound out means to question and listen attentively in order to discover a person's opinion, intent, or preference, especially by using indirect conversational remarks.
What is sound out in Sanskrit?
Sound out in Sanskrit is नु (nu). See Sound out meaning in Sanskrit.
What part of speech is sound out?
Sound out is a verb.
What is the past tense of sound out?
The past tense of sound out is sounded out.

Words near sound out in the dictionary

  1. sound money
  2. sound moneys
  3. Sound of Sleat
  4. sound off
  5. sound on the goose
  6. sound out
  7. sound plural
  8. sound plurals
  9. sound poetries
  10. sound poetry
  11. sound post

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sound out (page history and authors); नु (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “sound out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sound_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.