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Dear The_JAM: No topic is ever closed completely… ;-)
Unfortunately Webster’s is a name that a lot of other dictionaries have hijacked, since it is not legally trademarked.
My search on the Merriam-Webster website reveals the primary definitions of ‘sound’ to be “a particular auditory impression” or “the sensation perceived by the sense of hearing”, which would lead us to believe that a tree does NOT make a sound if it falls in the forest and nobody hears it.
Oxford English says the following, in its characteristically cryptic style: “…the sensation produced in the organs of hearing when the surrounding air is set in vibration in such a way as to affect these; also, that which is or may be heard; the external object of audition, or the property of bodies by which this is produced.”
So you can see that it is most certainly a matter of definition. Try and be a little more open-minded. I prefer to think of sound as something which just not objectively exist in a material sense, much like darkness. Darkness cannot be measured and does not have a corresponding particle or wave. It’s merely a word we use to refer to part of our sensory experiences.