Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Acoustics

Acoustics (#; 277) , noun

[Names of sciences in -ics, as, acoustics, mathematics, etc., are usually treated as singular. See -ics.]

(Physics) The science of sounds, teaching their nature, phenomena, and laws.
Acoustics, then, or the science of sound, is a very considerable branch of physics. — Sir J. Herschel

The science is, by some writers, divided, into diacoustics, which explains the properties of sounds coming directly from the ear; and catacoustica, which treats of reflected sounds or echoes.