voice
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "voice", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "voice" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "voice" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
voice is aEnglishnoun. It means: Sound uttered by the mouth, especially by human beings in speech or song; sound thus uttered considered as possessing some special quality or character. Pronounced /vɔɪs/. It ranks #918 in English word frequency. Often confused with vote and void.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | voice |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /vɔɪs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #918 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for voice is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /vɔɪs/. Corpus data places it at rank #918 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for voice, with forms such as "ovice", "vioce", and "vocie". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "vote", "void", "VoIP", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English voice, voys, vois, borrowed from Anglo-Norman voiz, voys, voice, Old French vois, voiz (Modern French voix), from Latin vōcem, accusative form of vōx (“voice”), from Proto-Indo-European *wṓkʷs, root noun from *wekʷ- (“to utter, speak”). … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is voice, spelled V-O-I-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Sound uttered by the mouth, especially by human beings in speech or song; sound thus uttered considered as possessing some special quality or character.
- 2Sound made through vibration of the vocal cords; sonant, or intonated, utterance; tone; — distinguished from mere breath sound as heard in whispering and voiceless consonants.
- 3The tone or sound emitted by an object.
- 4The faculty or power of utterance.
- 5That which is communicated; message; meaning.
- 6An expressed opinion, choice, will, desire, or wish; the right or ability to make such expression or to have it considered.
- 7Command; precept.
- 8One who speaks; a speaker.
- 9A particular style or way of writing that expresses a certain tone or feeling.
- 10A particular way of inflecting or conjugating verbs, or a particular form of a verb, which indicates the relation of the subject of the verb to the action which the verb expresses.
- 11In harmony, an independent vocal or instrumental part in a piece of composition.
- 12A flag associated with a user on a channel, determining whether they can send messages to the channel.
Etymology
From Middle English voice, voys, vois, borrowed from Anglo-Norman voiz, voys, voice, Old French vois, voiz (Modern French voix), from Latin vōcem, accusative form of vōx (“voice”), from Proto-Indo-European *wṓkʷs, root noun from *wekʷ- (“to utter, speak”). Cognate with Sanskrit वाच् (vāc), Ancient Greek ὄψ (óps), Persian آواز (âvâz). Displaced native Middle English steven (“voice”) (from Old English stefn (see steven)), Old English hlēoþor, Old English woþ, and Old English reord. Compare advocate, advowson, avouch, convoke, vocal, vouch, vowel. Doublet of vox.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ovice,vioce,vocie,voicce,voiec,vvoice
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for voice
Misspelling Variants of "voice"
Frequency rank: #918 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter V in our English index: