Word.ws English Dictionary

sounds out

sounds out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of sound out.

Meaning of sound out

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

Questions about sounds out

What is sounds out the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Sounds out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of sound out.

Words near sounds out in the dictionary

  1. sounds
  2. sounds about white
  3. sounds good
  4. sounds like a plan
  5. sounds off
  6. sounds out
  7. sounds the alarm
  8. soundscape
  9. soundscaped
  10. soundscapes
  11. soundscaping

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sounds out (page history and authors); sound out (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: “sounds out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sounds_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.