ABSTRACT
The word ‘sonic’ is, I think, self-explanatory: it is simply an adjective that refers to sound. ‘Style,’ on the other hand, is a more slippery word. The large and weather-beaten Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary that has long been my trusted companion gives a six-point defi nition that runs to twenty lines; the much smaller American Heritage Dictionary gives only fourteen lines divided into eight defi nitions for nouns and three for verbs, and the Penguin Macquarie Dictionary that has lately helped my efforts to understand Australian English has a defi nition of twenty-one lines divided into no less than thirteen defi nitions.
