voiceless

adj
/ˈvɔɪsləs/

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *wekʷ-der. Proto-Indo-European *wṓkʷs Proto-Italic *wōks Latin vōcem Anglo-Norman voizbor. Middle English voys English voice Proto-Indo-European *lewh₁- Proto-Indo-European *lewHs-der. Proto-Germanic *leusaną Proto-Germanic *lausaz Proto-Germanic *-lausaz Proto-West Germanic *-laus Old English -lēas Middle English -les English -less English voiceless From voice + -less.

  1. derived from *wekʷ-der

Definitions

  1. Lacking a voice, without vocal sound.

    • How people, with any pretence to decency or cleanliness, can, for a day, sit voiceless and patient and see these brutes destroy and befilth everything, public and private, is difficult to believe.
    • A voiceless song in an ageless light / Sings at the coming dawn / Birds in flight are calling there / Where the heart moves the stones / It's there that my heart is calling / All for the love of you.
  2. Without a vote

    Without a vote; having no input into a decision.

    • I've come to see she is a voiceless person in her world, and so I try to remember to stop and give her my full-faced attention when I see her.
    • I feel like hip-hop / Used to be a voice for the voiceless, you know? / And now it's become, at least in the mainstream, a symbol of / misogyny, gay panic, fiscal irresponsibility, you know? / So I figure / if you can't beat 'em / join 'em
  3. Spoken without vibration of the vocal cords

    Spoken without vibration of the vocal cords; unvoiced, surd, breathed. Examples: [t], [s], [f], [m̥], [u̥].

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at voiceless. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01voiceless02vocal03modulated04modulate05regulate06dictate07speak08voice

A definitional loop anchored at voiceless. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

8 hops · closes at voiceless

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA