undervoice

From under- +‎ voice.

• (noun) IPA^(key): /ˈʌndə(ɹ)ˌvɔɪs/
• (verb) IPA^(key): /ˌʌndə(ɹ)ˈvɔɪs/

• Audio (US):

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• Hyphenation: un‧der‧voice

undervoice (plural undervoices)

1. A low or quiet voice.
   • 1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter II, in Mansfield Park: , volume II, London: for 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. , volume (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 […]

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.

• voice-under, voiceunder