undervoice

Etymology

under- +‎ voice.

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: un‧der‧voice

Noun

undervoice (plural undervoices)

1. A low or quiet voice.
   • 1814 July, [Jane Austen], chapter II, in Mansfield Park: A Novel. In Three Volumes, volume II, London: Printed for T[homas] Egerton, Military Library, Whitehall, OCLC 39810224, 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:

     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, 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 […]