(via https://www.etymonline.com/word/Sound )

sound “noise, what is heard, sensation produced through the ear” late 13c., soun, from Old French son “sound, musical note, voice,” from Latin sonus “sound, a noise,” from PIE *swon-o-, from root *swen- “to sound.”
sound “to be audible, produce vibrations affecting the ear” from Old French soner (Modern French sonner) and directly from Latin sonare “to sound, make a noise” (from PIE root *swen- “to sound”). It is attested from late 14c. as “cause something (an instrument, etc.) to produce sound.”
sound “healthy, not diseased, free from special defect or injury” c. 1200, sounde, from Old English gesund “sound, safe, having the organs and faculties complete and in perfect action,” from Proto-Germanic *sunda-, from Germanic root *swen-to- “healthy, strong” (source also of Old Saxon gisund, Old Frisian sund, Dutch gezond, Old High German gisunt, German gesund “healthy,” as in the post-sneezing interjection gesundheit; also Old English swið “strong,” Gothic swinþs “strong,” German geschwind “fast, quick”). The German words have connections in Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic.
sound “fathom, probe, measure the depth of water” mid-14c. (implied in sounding), from Old French sonder, from sonde “sounding line,” perhaps from the same Germanic source that yielded Old English sund “water, sea”
sound “narrow channel of water” c. 1300, sounde, from Old Norse sund “a strait, swimming,” or from cognate Old English sund “act of swimming; stretch of water one can swim across, a strait of the sea,” both from Proto-Germanic *sundam-, from asuffixed form of Germanic *swem- “to move, stir, swim”
  • sound.txt
  • Last modified: 2023-07-01 09:28
  • by nik