Word.ws English Dictionary

sounder

/ˈsaʊndɚ/

sounder is the comparative form of sound.

Noun (1)

sounder (plural sounders)

  1. Something or someone who makes a sound.
    • a telephone with an electronic sounder
  2. An instrument used in telegraphy in place of a register, the communications being read by sound.
  3. (dated, plural, plural-only) A stethoscope.
  4. Synonym of sting (“brief musical sequence in television etc.”).
    Synonyms:
    sting

Noun (2)

sounder (plural sounders)

  1. A device for making soundings at sea.
  2. A person who takes soundings.
  3. A fishfinder.

Noun (3)

sounder (plural sounders)

  1. A group of wild boar.
    • It was not only that there were wild boars in it, whose sounders would at this season be furiously rooting about, nor that one of the surviving wolves might be slinking behind any tree, with pale eyes and slavering chops.1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter II, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone)
    • Members of a sounder share a home range, and often move around their home range in a group (feral pigs, Gabor et al.,1999).2008, Richard B. D'Eath and Simon P. Turner, edited by Jeremy N. Marchant-Forde, The Welfare of Pigs, Springer Netherlands, page 21
  2. A young boar.

Meaning of sound

Adjective

sound (comparative sounder, superlative soundest)

  1. Healthy.
    • He was safe and sound.
  2. Complete, solid, or secure.
    • Fred assured me the floorboards were sound.
  3. Having the property of soundness.
    • With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions. Herbarium material does not, indeed, allow one to extrapolate safely: what...1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii
  4. (Ireland, UK, slang) Good; acceptable; decent.
    • How are you? —I'm sound.
  5. Quiet and deep.
    • Sound asleep means sleeping peacefully, and often deeply.
  6. Heavy; laid on with force.
    • a sound beating

See all 31 meanings of sound

Synonyms of sounder

Forms of sounder

pluralsounders

Origin of sounder

From Middle English *soundere, from Old English ġesundra, from Proto-Germanic *sundizô, equivalent to sound + -er (comparative suffix).

From Middle English soundar, sownere, equivalent to sound + -er.

From French sonder.

Words formed from sounder

Phrases with sounder

Words that rhyme with sounder

Questions about sounder

What does sounder mean?
Sounder means something or someone who makes a sound.
What is sounder the comparative form of?
Sounder is the comparative form of sound.
What part of speech is sounder?
Sounder is a noun.
How do you pronounce sounder?
Sounder is pronounced /ˈsaʊndɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of sounder?
The plural of sounder is sounders.

Words near sounder in the dictionary

  1. SoundClouds
  2. sounded
  3. sounded off
  4. sounded out
  5. sounded the alarm
  6. sounder
  7. sounders
  8. soundest
  9. soundeth
  10. soundex
  11. Soundexed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sounder (page history and authors); sound (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-sounder.wav.

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