Thank you folks, these are all excellent points.
How does rebound work for you? It conveys some of that springing idea.l but is in essence reflection or un-deflection.
To me, bounding requires a being with volition investing energy. Dogs and children notably bound over fields and such. It sort of suggests to me that each burst of energy is bigger than the previous.
And the bound in leaps and bounds suggests to me not bouncing but a leap that is longer than an ordinary leap.
I've always assumed that when something is bounding, it is the one that's generating the kinetic energy. But something that bounces is using the kinetic energy they already have.
Rebounding, on the other hand, is like bouncing, in that the energy is already there, and not being generated by the object doing the rebounding.
Rebound actually sounds pretty good. And it does fit better than just bound, which yeah, makes me think of Disney squash and stretch.
I have never thought bounce and bound to be synonymous, and can't really imagine sound bounding.
Reverberate sounds good if a bit of a mouthful. Echoing might work if you want fewer syllables.
Yeah, fair. My thoughts went bounce -> bound -> echo. However, I was worried that echo would conjure distance in the reader's mind.
Ricochet in the middle of the syllable count and technically very accurate - often used with gunshot sounds.
A sound ricocheting seems more odd to me than the others, especially since it might intrude on the ballistic context i.e. ricochet makes me think of a bullet ricocheting rather than the sound of the cartridge going off.
i agree that this is probably the best word.
But - just a side question - is this being written from the POV of the shooter, an observer, or the one being shot?
the experience would be different for each one. For example, if shot, the feeling of being shot would overwhelm all your senses
It's the shooter, wincing at how the soundwaves hit the cubicle walls / desk and jittered back into his ears in that weird coalesced/overlapped fashion. He's not unaccustomed to firearms nor combat, though this was an unusually tight space for him.
Echoed? Though "reverberated" is good.
Thinking about it from another angle, who's your POV character, the one who's hearing this noise? How might he or she describe the way the sound affected his ears?
Yeah echoed made me think of distance, longer delay, canyons, mountain ranges, though it is technically correct. I don't know, maybe it's just me.
Good point about how the POV would describe it, which does
not have to be technically correct. In this case he's the prime POV. I almost always give the prime POV reasons to have a large vocabulary or perhaps be a bit more educated than his peers in order to hopefully avoid author intrusion without sacrificing language. That's a long way of saying he knows what reverberation is.
Though that said, in or after a hectic moment, fewer syllables may fit better regardless of who's thinking it. Or as you also pointed out, I could focus on the effect it has on his ears instead. Nothing illustrative comes to mind for how he might describe it since it's such a particular effect, but maybe in edits I'll think of something.
