voice

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

• noun The sound produced by the vocal organs of a vertebrate, especially a human.
• noun The ability to produce such sounds.
• noun The mind as it produces verbal thoughts.
• noun A specified quality, condition, or pitch of vocal sound.
• noun Linguistics Expiration of air through vibrating vocal cords, used in the production of vowels and voiced consonants.
• noun A sound resembling or reminiscent of vocal utterance.
• noun Musical sound produced by vibration of the human vocal cords and resonated within the throat and head cavities.
• noun The quality or condition of a person's singing.
• noun A singer.
• noun One of the individual vocal or instrumental parts or strands in a composition.
• noun Expression; utterance.
• noun A medium or agency of expression.
• noun The right or opportunity to express a choice or opinion.
• noun Grammar A property of verbs or a set of verb inflections indicating the relation between the subject and the action expressed by the verb.
• noun The distinctive style or manner of expression of an author or of a character in a book.
• transitive verb To give expression to; utter.
• transitive verb Linguistics To pronounce with vibration of the vocal cords.
• transitive verb To provide (a composition) with voice parts.
• transitive verb To regulate the tone of (the pipes of an organ, for example).
• transitive verb To provide the voice for (a cartoon character or show, for example).
• idiom (at the top of (one's) voice) As loudly as one's voice will allow.
• idiom (with one voice) In complete agreement; unanimously.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In music, a singer or the voice-part that a singer sings.
• noun In voice-building, same as voice quality.
• noun The sound made by the stridulation of an insect.
• noun The sound uttered by the mouths of living creatures; especially, human utterance in speaking, singing, crying, shouting, etc.; the sound made by a person in speaking, singing, crying, etc.; the character, quality, or expression of the sounds so uttered: as, to hear a voice; to recognize a voice; a loud voice; a low voice.
• noun Voice as a scientific term may mean either the faculty of nttering audible sounds, or the body of audible sounds produced by the organs of respiration, especially the larynx of man and other animals: contradistinguished from speech or articulate language. Voice is produced when air is driven by the muscles of expiration from the lungs through the trachea and strikes against the two vocal cords (see cord), the vibrations of which produce sounds varying in different animals according to the structure of the organs and the power which the animal possesses over them. Voice can, therefore, be found only in animals in which this svstem of respiration is developed, and the lungs and larynx (or syrinx) actually exist. Fishes, having no lnngs, are dumb, as far as true vocal utterance is concerned, though various noises may issue from their throats (see croaker, grunt, and drum). In man the superior organization and mobility of the tongue and lips, as well as the perfection of the larynx, enable him to modify his vocal sounds to an almost infinite extent. In ordinary speaking the tones of the voice have nearly all the same pitch, and the variety of the sounds is due rather to the action of the mouth-organs than to definite movements of the glottis and vocal cords. In singing the successive sounds correspond more or less closely to the ideal tones of the musical scale. The male voice admits of division into tenor and bass, and the female into soprano and contralto. The lowest female tone is an octave or so higher than the lowest tone of the male voice; and the female's highest tone is about an octave above that of the male. The compass of both voices taken together is four octaves or more, the chief differences residing in the pitch and also in the timbre. In medicine, voice is the sound of utterance as transmitted through the lungs and chest-wall in auscultation. In zoology, voice is ordinarily restricted to respiratory sounds or vocal utterance, as above explained, and as distinguished from any mechanical noise, like stridulation, etc. The more usual word for the voice of any animal is cry; and the various cries, distinctive or characteristic of certain animals, take many distinctive terms, according to their vocal quality, as bark, bay, bellow, bleat, bray, cackle, call, caw, chatter, chirp, chirrup, cluck, coo, croak, crow, gabble, gobble, growl, grunt, hiss, honk, hoot, howl, low, mew, neigh, peep, pipe, purr, quack, roar, scream, screech, snarl, snort, song, squall, squawk, squeak, squeal, trumpet, twitter, warble, waul, whine, whinny, whistle, whoop, yawp, yell, yelp, and many others. The voices of some animals, as certain monkeys and large carnivores and ruminants, may be heard a mile; or more. The voice reaches its highest development, in animals other than human, in the distinctively musical class of birds, some of which, notably parrots and certain corvine and sturnoid birds, can be taught to talk intelligible speech.
• noun The faculty of speaking; speech; utterance.
• noun A sound produced by an inanimate object and regarded as representing the voice of an intelligent being: as, the voice of the winds.
• noun Anything analogous to human speech which conveys impressions to any of the senses or to the mind.
• noun Opinion or choice expressed; the right of expressing an opinion; vote; suffrage: as, you have no voice in the matter.
• noun One who speaks; a speaker.
• noun Wish or admonition made known in any way; command; injunction.
• noun That which is said; report; rumor; hence, reputation; fame.
• noun A word; a term; a vocable.
• noun In phonetics, sound uttered with resonance of the vocal cords, and not with a mere emission of breath; sonant utterance.
• noun In grammar, that form of the verb or body of inflections which shows the relation of the subject of the affirmation or predication to the action expressed by the verb.
• To give utterance to; assert; proclaim; declare; announce; rumor; report.
• To fit for producing the proper sounds; regulate the tone of: as, to voice the pipes of an organ. See voicing.
• To write the voiceparts of. Hill, Dict. Mus. Terms.
• To nominate; adjudge by acclamation; declare.
• In phonetics, to utter with voice or toue or sonancy, as distinguished from breath.
• To speak; vote; give opinion.

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

• noun Sound uttered by the mouth, especially that uttered by human beings in speech or song; sound thus uttered considered as possessing some special quality or character.
• noun (Phon.) Sound of the kind or quality heard in speech or song in the consonants b, v, d, etc., and in the vowels; sonant, or intonated, utterance; tone; -- distinguished from mere breath sound as heard in f, s, sh, etc., and also whisper.
• noun The tone or sound emitted by anything.