Sentence Examples
His stern tone and loud voice belied his inner sensitivity and caring nature.
You are always wearing a loud necktie.
Do you have to play that music so loud?
Word Origin & History
From Middle English loude, loud, lud, from Old English hlūd (“loud, noisy, sounding, sonorous”), from Proto-West Germanic *hlūd, from Proto-Germanic *hlūdaz, *hlūþaz (“heard”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱlewtos (“heard, famous”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱlew- (“to hear”). More at listen.
Cognates
Akin to Scots loud, lowd (“loud”), Swedish ljud, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk lyd, Faroese ljóð, Icelandic hljóð, West Frisian lûd (“loud”), Dutch luid (“loud”), Low German lud (“loud”), German laut (“loud”), Irish clú (“repute”), Welsh clywed (“heard”), clod (“praise”), Latin laudare (“praise”), Tocharian A/B klots/klautso 'ear', klyostär 'heard', Ancient Greek κλυτός (klutós, “famous”), Albanian quaj (“to name, call”), shquar (“famous, notorious”), Old Armenian լու (lu, “the act of hearing”), Old Church Slavonic слава (slava, “glory”), слово (slovo, “word”), Sanskrit श्रव (śráva, “glory”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Mr. Cooke at once began a tirade against the residents of Asquith for permitting a sandy and generally disgraceful condition of the roads. So roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the veranda."
— 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"She is loud and stubborn."
— 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs vii:11:
"Some of the loudest blubberers are developers who, having made enormous profits as a result of local, state, and federal subsidies, complain that government doesn't do enough for them."
— 1988 September 12, Ben Joravsky, “Property-tax assessments rise; north siders are revolting”, in Chicago Reader, archived from the original on 24 Oct 2020:
"In comparison with the loud Portrait of E.C. Ricart (ill. p. 13) two years earlier, Miró has captured a soft, hushed atmosphere here."
— 2006, Janis Mink, Joan Miró, →ISBN, page 22:
"The expander doesn't really make the louds louder and the softs softer in one step […]"
— 2012, Sam McGuire, Paul Lee, The Video Editor's Guide to Soundtrack Pro, page 103: