stentorian
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of stentorian
Explanation
The adjective stentorian describes a booming voice. If you're teaching a group of unruly kids, you'll need to practice a stentorian voice to be heard above the din. The adjective stentorian comes from Greek mythology. Stentor was a herald in the Trojan War, mentioned in Homer's "Iliad." Homer wrote of brazen-voiced Stentor, whose cry was as loud as that of fifty men together. So anyone with a stentorian voice has a voice like the mythic Stentor. You can also use stentorian to describe a style of speaking that emphasizes boom and power.
Vocabulary lists containing stentorian
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Turn It Up! Synonyms for "Loud"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It’s an assured, intelligent performance, if a touch too stentorian.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 29, 2026
But the graying signal caller still had something left in the glove compartment, and if you think I typed that while speaking in a stentorian John Facenda voice, I absolutely did.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 5, 2026
This habitual stentorian announcement of what the high court will be deciding was once merely myopic, ignoring ethics violations and judicial behavior as it did.
From Slate • Oct. 2, 2025
In the stentorian 18th-century cadences of historian Edward Gibbon and essayist Samuel Johnson, he painted a heroic portrait of that nation of shopkeepers and saw Britain’s current troubles in light of its glorious past.
From Seattle Times • Mar. 8, 2024
About that time he had begun to cultivate the black mustache with waxed tips and the somewhat stentorian voice that would characterize him in the war.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
