voices

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of voice.

   The singers blended their voices into one warm chord.

   Angry voices carried down the hallway from the meeting room.

   Note

   An ordinary -s plural that does a great deal of figurative work. Beyond singers and speakers, it counts opinions and the people who hold them: dissenting voices, the voices of the community, a debate with many voices. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, so in "the voices raised" and "she voices doubts" only the word's place in the sentence tells them apart.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of voice.

   The committee chair voices the group's decision to the press each week.

   A good union representative voices concerns that workers are afraid to raise.

   Note

   This form nearly always takes a direct object: she voices objections, he voices his support. The old intransitive sense of crying out is obsolete, so "he voices" with nothing after it now sounds unfinished. Two specialist uses survive. An instrument maker voices an instrument by regulating its tone, and on IRC an operator voices a user, giving them permission to send messages to the channel.

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