absonousadj.

a1620 M. Fotherby Atheomastix (1622) ii. xi. §4. 318 That noyse (as Macrobius truly inferreth) must be of necessity, either sweete and melodious, or harsh and absonous.

1732 R. Bentley Milton's Paradise Lost iv. 123 This accent is so absonous; that our Author, well skill'd in Music, could not be guilty of it.

1774 W. Mitford Ess. Harmony Lang. vii. 121 There are a few lines in the Paradise Lost, absonous from multiplied variations, and other faults in the accentuation.

1897 Contemp. Rev. Mar. 384 Erasmus he considered a trifler (badinum), who, being himself a Dutchman, fancied he could graft upon Greek speech monstrous (vastos) sounds and absonous diphthongs, foreign to the genius of the language.

1996 W. Morrisey Culture in Commerc. Republic vi. 101 The poem closes on an absonous strain... That man is dust warmed by God is a powerful, traditional image, but the word ‘warms’, in this graveyard context, sounds uncomfortably close to ‘worms’.

1642 E. Dering Coll. Speeches on Relig. xvi. 81 Parity of degrees in Church-government hath no foundation in holy Scripture, and is as absonous to reason, as parity in a State or family.

a1680 J. Glanvill Saducismus Triumphatus (1681) i. 118 Which distribution notwithstanding is as absonous and absurd, as if he had distributed Animal into Sensitive and Rational.

1715 M. Davies Εἰκων Μικρο-βιβλικὴ 43 Whose antipathy one to another was as dissonant and absonous, as their jarring opinions were incomprehensible.

1828 Lancet 28 June 397/1 Medical science..can no longer be impeded by the absonous and ridiculous dogmas of less auspicious times.

1884 T. Harper Metaphysics of School III. v. iii. 196 It is absonous to suppose that a relative should be capable of producing an absolute entity.

1951 Scripta Mathematica 17 180 The profane speak simplemindedly of splitting the number one into equal parts, but the experts..do not suffer fractions, or any equivalent of fractions, to be defined in a manner so absonous.