voiceless.

1. Lacking the power, opportunity, or recognized right to make one's views heard.

2. Unable to produce a speaking voice, whether temporarily or because of a physical condition.

3. Produced without vibration of the vocal folds, as with certain consonant sounds.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• the voiceless
• voiceless communities
• give voice to the voiceless

On the page

The inquiry finally heard testimony from families who had felt voiceless for years.

Usage notes

Primary category: poetic / figurative / atmospheric. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: More voiceless or most voiceless can describe degrees of social exclusion. Physical loss of voice and phonetic classification are normally non-gradable. Commonness: moderately common (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Separate social lack of influence, physical lack of speaking voice and phonetic absence of voicing; voiceless consonants are not silent. Writing functions: literary expression, memory or character interpretation.