undervoice

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English

Etymology

under- +‎ voice.

Pronunciation

  • (noun) IPA(key): /ˈʌndə(ɹ)ˌvɔɪs/
  • (verb) IPA(key): /ˌʌndə(ɹ)ˈvɔɪs/
  • Hyphenation: un‧der‧voice

Noun

undervoice (plural undervoices)

  1. A low or quiet voice.
    • 1814 July, [Jane Austen], chapter II, in Mansfield Park: , volume II, London: T Egerton, , →OCLC, page 40:
      Her sensations were indefinable, and so were they a few minutes afterwards upon hearing Henry Crawford, who had a chair between herself and Tom, ask the latter in an under voice whether there were any plan for resuming the play after the present happy interruption […]
    • 1859, George Meredith, chapter XXXVI, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC:
      Brayder introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in rather an undervoice, as a thing to get over.
    • 1990, Charles R. Johnson, Middle Passage, Simon & Schuster, published 2012, page 171:
      A thousand soft undervoices that jumped my jangled senses from his last, weakly syllabled wind to a mosaic of voices within voices, each one immanent in the other, none his but all strangely his […]
    • 1997, Don DeLillo, part 5, chapter 4, in Underworld, part 5, New York: Scribner:
      Through the battered century of world wars and massive violence by other means, there had always been an undervoice that spoke through the cannon fire and ack-ack and that sometimes grew strong enough to merge with the battle sounds. It was the struggle between the state and secret groups of insurgents, state-born, wild-eyed—the anarchists, terrorists, assassins and revolutionaries who tried to bring about apocalyptic change.
    • 1998, Ted Hughes, “Setebos”, in Birthday Letters, Faber & Faber:
      […] Your mother
      Played Prospero, flying her magic in
      To stage the Masque, and bless the marriage,
      Eavesdropping on the undervoices
      Of the honeymooners in Paris […]

Verb

undervoice (third-person singular simple present undervoices, present participle undervoicing, simple past and past participle undervoiced)

  1. (transitive) To voice too weakly.
    • 1984, Beverley Collins, Inger Margrethe Mees, The Sounds of English and Dutch, page 51:
      Consequently, the danger for Dutch learners of English is undervoicing the English lenis fricatives rather than the reverse.
  2. (transitive) To make a quieter or background sound beneath.
    • 1902, Martha McCulloch-Williams, Next to the Ground: Chronicles of a Countryside, page 74:
      Undervoicing the flame, there was the popping of hollow weed stalks, the tinkle of woody stems crisping and falling in coals.

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