ventriloquial
UK/vɛntɹɪˈləʊkwɪəl/
ventriloquial adjective: of or relating to ventriloquy.
Adjective
ventriloquial (comparative more ventriloquial, superlative most ventriloquial)
- 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.1924, Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not… (Parade's End), Penguin, published 2012, page 125
- Learn the ventriloquial alphabet: A C D E G H I J K L N O Q R S T U X Z2001 June 1, Jay Kirk, “Preachin' Puppets”, in Chicago Reader
- 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.1915, William J. Locke, Jaffery
- 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.2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 246
Forms of ventriloquial
| comparative | more ventriloquial |
|---|---|
| superlative | most ventriloquial |
Origin of ventriloquial
From ventriloquy + -al.
Words formed from ventriloquial
Questions about ventriloquial
- What does ventriloquial mean?
- Ventriloquial means of or relating to ventriloquy.
- What part of speech is ventriloquial?
- Ventriloquial is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce ventriloquial?
- Ventriloquial is pronounced /vɛntɹɪˈləʊkwɪəl/ (UK).
Words near ventriloquial in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ventriloquial (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “ventriloquial.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ventriloquial. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
