"cacophonous" meaning in English

See cacophonous in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

IPA: /kəˈkɑfənəs/ [General-American], /kəˈkɒfənəs/ [UK] Audio: En-us-cacophonous.ogg [US] Forms: more cacophonous [comparative], most cacophonous [superlative]
Etymology: From Ancient Greek κακός (kakós, “bad”) + φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice”). Etymology templates: {{uder|en|grc|κακός||bad}} Ancient Greek κακός (kakós, “bad”), {{m|grc|φωνή||voice}} φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice”) Head templates: {{en-adj}} cacophonous (comparative more cacophonous, superlative most cacophonous)
  1. Containing, consisting of, or producing harsh, unpleasant or discordant sounds. Categories (topical): Sound Hypernyms: audible, unpleasant Related terms: cacophony, cacophonic, cacophonously, harsh, jarring Translations (containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds): cacofònic [masculine] (Catalan), kakofonisk (Danish), kakofoninen (Finnish), cacophonique [feminine, masculine] (French), kakophon (German), kakophonisch (German), κακόφωνος (kakófonos) (Greek), kakofonisk (Norwegian Bokmål), kakofonisk (Norwegian Nynorsk), какофонический (kakofoničeskij) (Russian), cacofónico (Spanish), kakofonisk (Swedish)

Download JSON data for cacophonous meaning in English (7.2kB)

{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "harmonious"
    },
    {
      "word": "musical"
    },
    {
      "word": "euphonious"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "grc",
        "3": "κακός",
        "4": "",
        "5": "bad"
      },
      "expansion": "Ancient Greek κακός (kakós, “bad”)",
      "name": "uder"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "grc",
        "2": "φωνή",
        "3": "",
        "4": "voice"
      },
      "expansion": "φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Ancient Greek κακός (kakós, “bad”) + φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "more cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "comparative"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "most cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "superlative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "cacophonous (comparative more cacophonous, superlative most cacophonous)",
      "name": "en-adj"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English undefined derivations",
          "parents": [
            "Undefined derivations",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Sound",
          "orig": "en:Sound",
          "parents": [
            "Energy",
            "Nature",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1993, Mike Leigh, Naked, spoken by Brian (Peter Wight)",
          "text": "The good thing about this job is that it gives me time and space to contemplate the future at my leisure, whilst the city sleeps, free from the cacophonous curiosity of the hoi polloi.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Everett True, Nirvana: The Biography, Da Capo Press, published 2007, page 58",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Fern Michaels, To Taste the Wine, Kensington Books, published 2011, page 153",
          "text": "[…] and the cacophonous clatter of pots and pans accompanied the vociferous complaints of the ship's cook.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, Michael D. Breed & Janice Moore, Animal Behavior, Academic Press (2012), page 199 (image caption)",
          "text": "A colony of pelicans can be cacophonous."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Containing, consisting of, or producing harsh, unpleasant or discordant sounds."
      ],
      "hypernyms": [
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "audible"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "unpleasant"
        }
      ],
      "hyponyms": [
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "drony"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "strident"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "stridulous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "croaky"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "grating"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "guttural"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "hoarse"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "nasal"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "raspy"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "sibilant"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "throaty"
        }
      ],
      "id": "en-cacophonous-en-adj-Dm~-qb6l",
      "links": [
        [
          "harsh",
          "harsh"
        ],
        [
          "unpleasant",
          "unpleasant"
        ],
        [
          "discordant",
          "discordant"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "cacophony"
        },
        {
          "word": "cacophonic"
        },
        {
          "word": "cacophonously"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "harsh"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "jarring"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "inharmonious"
        },
        {
          "word": "unmusical"
        },
        {
          "word": "unmelodic"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "tags": [
            "rare"
          ],
          "word": "absonant"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "cacophonic"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "cacophonical"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "cacophonious"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "cacophonous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "discordant"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "disharmonious"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "dissonant"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "honeyed"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "horrisonant"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "tags": [
            "obsolete"
          ],
          "word": "horrisonous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "tags": [
            "archaic"
          ],
          "word": "immelodious"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "insonorous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "noneuphonious"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "nonsonorous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "raucous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "tags": [
            "figuratively"
          ],
          "word": "scabrous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "tuneless"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "uneuphonious"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "unharmonious"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "unlistenable"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "unmellifluous"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "unmelodious"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "tags": [
            "archaic"
          ],
          "word": "untunable"
        },
        {
          "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
          "word": "unsonorous"
        }
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "cacofònic"
        },
        {
          "code": "da",
          "lang": "Danish",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "kakofonisk"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "kakofoninen"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "tags": [
            "feminine",
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "cacophonique"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "kakophon"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "kakophonisch"
        },
        {
          "code": "el",
          "lang": "Greek",
          "roman": "kakófonos",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "κακόφωνος"
        },
        {
          "code": "nb",
          "lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "kakofonisk"
        },
        {
          "code": "nn",
          "lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "kakofonisk"
        },
        {
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "kakofoničeskij",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "какофонический"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "cacofónico"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
          "word": "kakofonisk"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/kəˈkɑfənəs/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/kəˈkɒfənəs/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-us-cacophonous.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9f/En-us-cacophonous.ogg/En-us-cacophonous.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/En-us-cacophonous.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (US)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "cacophonous"
}
{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "harmonious"
    },
    {
      "word": "musical"
    },
    {
      "word": "euphonious"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "grc",
        "3": "κακός",
        "4": "",
        "5": "bad"
      },
      "expansion": "Ancient Greek κακός (kakós, “bad”)",
      "name": "uder"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "grc",
        "2": "φωνή",
        "3": "",
        "4": "voice"
      },
      "expansion": "φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Ancient Greek κακός (kakós, “bad”) + φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "more cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "comparative"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "most cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "superlative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "cacophonous (comparative more cacophonous, superlative most cacophonous)",
      "name": "en-adj"
    }
  ],
  "hypernyms": [
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "audible"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "unpleasant"
    }
  ],
  "hyponyms": [
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "drony"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "strident"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "stridulous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "croaky"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "grating"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "guttural"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "hoarse"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "nasal"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "raspy"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "sibilant"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "throaty"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "cacophony"
    },
    {
      "word": "cacophonic"
    },
    {
      "word": "cacophonously"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "harsh"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "jarring"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English 4-syllable words",
        "English adjectives",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English terms derived from Ancient Greek",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English undefined derivations",
        "en:Sound"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1993, Mike Leigh, Naked, spoken by Brian (Peter Wight)",
          "text": "The good thing about this job is that it gives me time and space to contemplate the future at my leisure, whilst the city sleeps, free from the cacophonous curiosity of the hoi polloi.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Everett True, Nirvana: The Biography, Da Capo Press, published 2007, page 58",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Fern Michaels, To Taste the Wine, Kensington Books, published 2011, page 153",
          "text": "[…] and the cacophonous clatter of pots and pans accompanied the vociferous complaints of the ship's cook.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, Michael D. Breed & Janice Moore, Animal Behavior, Academic Press (2012), page 199 (image caption)",
          "text": "A colony of pelicans can be cacophonous."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Containing, consisting of, or producing harsh, unpleasant or discordant sounds."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "harsh",
          "harsh"
        ],
        [
          "unpleasant",
          "unpleasant"
        ],
        [
          "discordant",
          "discordant"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/kəˈkɑfənəs/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/kəˈkɒfənəs/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-us-cacophonous.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9f/En-us-cacophonous.ogg/En-us-cacophonous.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/En-us-cacophonous.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (US)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "inharmonious"
    },
    {
      "word": "unmusical"
    },
    {
      "word": "unmelodic"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "rare"
      ],
      "word": "absonant"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "cacophonic"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "cacophonical"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "cacophonious"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "cacophonous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "discordant"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "disharmonious"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "dissonant"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "honeyed"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "horrisonant"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "obsolete"
      ],
      "word": "horrisonous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "archaic"
      ],
      "word": "immelodious"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "insonorous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "noneuphonious"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "nonsonorous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "raucous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ],
      "word": "scabrous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "tuneless"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "uneuphonious"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "unharmonious"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "unlistenable"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "unmellifluous"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "unmelodious"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "tags": [
        "archaic"
      ],
      "word": "untunable"
    },
    {
      "source": "Thesaurus:cacophonous",
      "word": "unsonorous"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "cacofònic"
    },
    {
      "code": "da",
      "lang": "Danish",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "kakofonisk"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "kakofoninen"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "tags": [
        "feminine",
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "cacophonique"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "kakophon"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "kakophonisch"
    },
    {
      "code": "el",
      "lang": "Greek",
      "roman": "kakófonos",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "κακόφωνος"
    },
    {
      "code": "nb",
      "lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "kakofonisk"
    },
    {
      "code": "nn",
      "lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "kakofonisk"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "kakofoničeskij",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "какофонический"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "cacofónico"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "containing or consisting of unpleasant sounds",
      "word": "kakofonisk"
    }
  ],
  "word": "cacophonous"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (e268c0e and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.