sounder

English

sounder

comparative form of sound: more sound
- 1961 April, “Talking of Trains”, in Trains Illustrated, page 199:
  The Northern Division Traffic Manager has said that there is no present intention of terminating the service, but the hopes previously entertained of expanding it cannot be entertained until it is operating on a sounder economic basis.

From Middle English soundar, sownere, equivalent to sound +‎ -er.

sounder (plural sounders)

Something or someone who makes a sound.
a telephone with an electronic sounder
An instrument used in telegraphy in place of a register, the communications being read by sound.
(medicine, dated, plural only) A stethoscope.

sounding device

sounder (plural sounders)

Inherited from Middle English soundre, from Anglo-Norman soundre, Old Northern French sondre, from a Germanic language, probably Old English sunor (“herd of swine”), from Proto-West Germanic *suniʀu, plural of *sun (“swine, boar”), from Proto-Germanic *sunaz (“boar”), from Proto-Indo-European *sewH- (“to bring forth, bear, give birth”). Cognate with Dutch zeunie (“trough, drinking bowl”).

sounder (plural sounders)

A group of wild boar.
- 1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter II, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone):
  It was not only that there were wild boars in it, whose sounders would at this season be furiously rooting about, nor that one of the surviving wolves might be slinking behind any tree, with pale eyes and slavering chops.
A young boar.

sounder