MELODIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does melodious mean? 

• MELODIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective MELODIOUS has 2 senses:

1. having a musical sound; especially a pleasing tune

2. containing or constituting or characterized by pleasing melody

  Familiarity information: MELODIOUS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MELODIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having a musical sound; especially a pleasing tune

Synonyms:

melodious; tuneful

Derivation:

melodiousness (the property of having a melody)

melody (the perception of pleasant arrangements of musical notes)

melody (a succession of notes forming a distinctive sequence)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Containing or constituting or characterized by pleasing melody

Synonyms:

melodic; melodious; musical

Context example:

the melodious song of a meadowlark

Similar:

ariose; songlike (having a melody (as distinguished from recitative))

canorous; songful (richly melodious)

cantabile; singing (smooth and flowing)

dulcet; honeyed; mellifluous; mellisonant; sweet (pleasing to the ear)

lyrical (suitable for or suggestive of singing)

Antonym:

unmelodious (lacking melody)

Derivation:

melodiousness (the property of having a melody)

melody (the perception of pleasant arrangements of musical notes)

melody (a succession of notes forming a distinctive sequence)

 Context examples 

Aired! (She laughed, here, in the most melodious manner.) On a Sunday morning, when I don't practise, I must do something.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Intriguingly, people in other parts of Africa use very different sounds for the same purpose – for example, our colleague Brian Wood’s work has shown that Hadza honey-hunters in Tanzania make a melodious whistling sound to recruit honeyguides.

(How humans and wild Honeyguide birds call each other to help, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

I have forgotten their names—Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela or Gloria or Judy or June, and their last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)