Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The art of projecting one's voice so that it seems to come from another source, as from a wooden figure.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act, art, or practice of speaking or uttering sounds in such a manner that the voice appears to come, not from the person speaking, but from a distance, as from the opposite side of the room or from the Cellar.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act, art, or practice of speaking in such a manner that the voice appears to come, not from the person speaking, but from some other source, as from a dummy held by the ventriloquist, from the opposite side of the room, from the cellar, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The art of projecting one's voice without moving the lips so that it appears to come from another source, such as a dummy.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the art of projecting your voice so that it seems to come from another source (as from a ventriloquist's dummy)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin ventriloquus, speaking from the belly : venter, ventr-, belly + loquī, to speak; see tolkw- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

ventriloquy + -ism.

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