Voiced

How to spell voiced

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce voiced

What does voiced mean?

1. verbExpressed an opinion, concern, or feeling in spoken words.
2. adjectiveOf a speech sound, produced with vibration of the vocal cords.

Voiced in a sentence

• verb

  Several staff voiced their concerns about the new schedule.

• adjective

  The letter b represents a voiced consonant in English.

• verb

  She voiced strong support for the proposal at the meeting.

• adjective

  A voiced consonant carries a buzz from the throat that its silent counterpart lacks.

Where does voiced come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'voice', which itself comes from the noun voice. English took the noun from Old French 'vois' or 'voiz' in the 1200s, and that word descended from the Latin 'vox' (stem 'vocem'), meaning literally the sound a person makes when speaking or calling out. The same Latin root sits inside a large family of English words, including 'vocal', 'vocation', 'advocate', and 'vociferous', all tied to the idea of calling or speaking. The verb sense, meaning to put a feeling or opinion into spoken words, developed naturally from the noun, and the inflected form 'voiced' simply adds the regular '-ed' ending. In phonetics, 'voiced' took on a technical meaning for sounds produced with the vocal cords vibrating, which keeps the original link to the vox that the throat actually makes. The spelling trap is small but real: the silent 'e' of 'voice' is dropped before '-ed', leaving 'voiced' rather than 'voiceed'.

How the word is built

• voic- (from Latin vox, vocem: voice)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)