Ventriloquial

//vɛntɹɪˈləʊkwɪəl// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or relating to ventriloquy.

    "Her voice came, muffled, as if from the back of the top of his head. The ventriloquial effect was startling."

  2. 2
    Spoken to oneself.

    "He threw half-crowns up into the air until they disappeared into the central blue, and then held a ventriloquial conversation, not in the best of taste, with the celestial spirits, who having caught the coins announced their intention of sticking to them."

  3. 3
    Of bird vocalisations, sounding as though emanating from a location other than where the vocalising bird is.

    "We tried this a couple of times with no luck whatsoever, partly because whipbirds are notoriously ventriloquial and we could never agree on where the call was coming from."

Example

More examples

"Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity."

Etymology

From ventriloquy + -al.

More for "ventriloquial"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.