Word.ws English Dictionary

ventriloquial

UK/vɛntɹɪˈləʊkwɪəl/

ventriloquial adjective: of or relating to ventriloquy.

Adjective

ventriloquial (comparative more ventriloquial, superlative most ventriloquial)

  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.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
  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.1915, William J. Locke, Jaffery
  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.2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 246

Forms of ventriloquial

comparativemore ventriloquial
superlativemost 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

  1. ventriloquated
  2. ventriloquates
  3. ventriloquating
  4. ventriloque
  5. ventriloques
  6. ventriloquial
  7. ventriloquially
  8. ventriloquies
  9. ventriloquise
  10. ventriloquised
  11. ventriloquises

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.

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Cite this entry: “ventriloquial.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ventriloquial. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.