plummy
English edit
Etymology edit
plum + -y. In the sense of a voice, because of the supposed similarity to speaking with a plum in one's mouth.
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
plummy (comparative plummier, superlative plummiest)
- Of, pertaining to, containing, or characteristic of plums.
- The jam had a rich plummy aroma.
- (informal) Desirable; profitable; advantageous.
- 1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter 16, in Daniel Deronda, volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:
- The poets have made tragedies enough about signing one's self over to wickedness for the sake of getting something plummy; I shall write a tragedy of a fellow who signed himself over to be good, and was uncomfortable ever after.
- (of a voice) Rich, mellow and carefully articulated, especially with an upper-class accent.
- plummy-voiced
- 1948, Michael Glenne, Catherine Howard: The Story of Henry VIII's Fifth Queen[1], page 137:
- Then, feeling the fat hands caressing her reluctant bosom, listening dutifully to the rich, plummy voice, she realized finally what marriage to the King meant.
- 1968, Harry John Mooney, Thomas F. Staley, The Shapeless God: Essays on Modern Fiction[2], page 85:
- Ludovic's deferential voice ("after what's happened, Sir, don't you think it will be more suitable") suddenly turns from its plummy to the plebeian key ("to shut your bloody trap").
- 2014 March 31, Roger Cohen, “The case for Scotland”, in The New York Times[3]:
- The fact that David Cameron, the conservative prime minister, is a plummy-voiced, Eton-educated, upper-class Brit from central casting has played into [Alex] Salmond's hands.
- 2018 October 26, Ellen Barry, Amie Tsang, “London’s King of Retail Fashion, Brought Low by #MeToo”, in New York Times[4]:
- But a plummy-voiced Labour peer, Baron Peter Hain, decided to defy the court order, invoking his parliamentary privilege to identify Mr. Green as the subject of the newspaper’s investigation.
- 2024 January 1, Dwight Garner, “Want to Feel, Intellectually, Like Someone Is Rotating Your Tires?”, in The New York Times[5], →ISSN:
- Reviewing a collection of Tom Wolfe’s journalism, Hitchens deplored Wolfe’s affectations and his plummy conservative politics.