Voicemail

How to spell voicemail

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce voicemail

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does voicemail mean?

1. nounA system that records spoken telephone messages, or a message left on such a system.

Voicemail in a sentence

• She left a detailed voicemail about the rescheduled meeting.

• His voicemail was full, so the call would not connect.

Where does voicemail come from?

Language of origin: French

This is a modern English compound, joining 'voice' and 'mail', that arose in the 1970s and 1980s alongside the spread of automated telephone answering systems. The first half, 'voice', came into English through Old French 'vois' from the Latin 'vox', which simply meant a voice or a sound made by the mouth. The second half, 'mail', traces back through Old French 'male', meaning a travelling bag or pouch, and originally a Germanic word for a sack; it shifted over the centuries from the bag that carried letters to the letters and messages themselves. Putting the two together produced a tidy term for a spoken message stored and delivered electronically, exactly as written letters once were. Because both halves are common everyday words, the only real spelling question is whether to write it as one word, which is now the standard closed form.

How the word is built

• voice (spoken sound)
• mail (messages delivered)