Voiceover

How to spell voiceover

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce voiceover

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does voiceover mean?

1. nounNarration or spoken commentary recorded over film, video, or audio, by a speaker who is not seen on screen.

Voiceover in a sentence

• The documentary opens with a calm voiceover describing the landscape.

• She earns a steady income recording voiceover work for radio adverts.

Where does voiceover come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern English compound, joining the noun 'voice' to the adverb 'over'. 'Voice' itself came into English in the 1200s through Old French 'vois', which descended from the Latin 'vox', literally meaning 'voice' or 'sound made by the mouth'; that same Latin root survives in words like 'vocal' and 'vocabulary'. 'Over' is a much older native word from Old English 'ofer', meaning 'above' or 'across', with relatives all across the Germanic languages. The compound arose in the broadcasting and film industries of the twentieth century to describe a voice heard 'over' the action on screen, that is, narration laid above the visuals rather than coming from someone shown speaking. It is now usually written as a single solid word, though the older two-word and hyphenated spellings still appear, which is precisely where writers hesitate.

How the word is built

• voice (spoken sound)
• over (prefix-like adverb meaning across/above)