voiced

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of voice.

   Residents voiced their objections to the highway at the town meeting.

   The complaints voiced during the review were taken seriously.

   Note

   Most often this is voice in its "say aloud" meaning, and it takes an object: people voice objections, doubts or support. As a participle it can follow the noun it describes (the complaints voiced during the review). There is a newer use as well: to have voiced a user on IRC is to have given them permission to send messages to the channel. Don't confuse any of these with the phonetic adjective, which describes sounds, not speakers.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having a voice of a specified kind.

   The gravel-voiced singer was famous for her raspy ballads.

   A honey-voiced host welcomed the guests warmly.

   Note

   This adjective almost never stands alone. It attaches to a describing word to build a compound, as in shrill-voiced, gravel-voiced and honey-voiced, and the compound is hyphenated before a noun (a shrill-voiced little boy). The first element carries all the description. A soft-voiced speaker is gentle to listen to, which has nothing to do with the phonetic sense of consonants.

3. 3
   adjective

   Produced with vibration of the vocal cords.

   Like the difference between the buzz of a 'z' and the hiss of an 's': same mouth shape, but the vocal cords switch on.

   In English, the consonants [b], [d], and [g] are voiced.

   Voiced consonants such as [z] involve vocal-cord vibration that voiceless ones lack.

   Similarsonant

   Oppositevoiceless, unvoiced

   Note

   Phoneticians treat voicing as a yes-or-no property: a sound is voiced or it is not, so the word does not take more or very. Its opposite is voiceless, or equally unvoiced. Pairs such as [z] and [s], or [b] and [p], are made in the same place and in the same way. The vibration of the vocal cords is the only thing that tells them apart.

4. 4
   adjective

   Containing voice, as a signal or channel carrying speech.

   The encoder separates voiced segments from background noise.

   Each frame of the call is marked as voiced or silent.

   Oppositesilent, unvoiced

   Note

   Engineers divide a speech signal into stretches. Voiced is the label for the stretches that carry the periodic sound of vibrating vocal folds, as opposed to unvoiced or silent ones. The distinction is practical: voiced stretches carry more energy, so a system cleaning up noise may apply a smaller threshold to the unvoiced parts. It parallels the phonetic sense, but here it describes a stretch of signal rather than a single consonant.

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