Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Ventriloquist |
VentriloquistNoun1. A performer who projects the voice into a wooden dummy. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "ventriloquist" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1818. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Dream Interpretation | To dream of a ventriloquist, denotes that some treasonable affair is going to prove detrimental to your interest. If you think yourself one, you will not conduct yourself honorably towards people who trust you. For a young woman to dream she is mystified by the voice of a ventriloquist, foretells that she will be deceived into illicit adventures. Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted .... |
Occupations | Entertains audience by projecting voice so that it appears to come from dummy or puppet: Changes position of dummy or puppet during performance to give illusion of life. May construct puppet or dummy. May write script for show. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Ventriloquism is an act of deception in which a person manipulates his or her voice so that it appears that the voice is coming from someone or more often, something else. The most familiar type of ventriloquist today is a nightclub performer sitting on a stool with a wooden dummy on his lap. This comedic style of ventriloquism, however, is a fairly recent innovation, less than 100 years old.The roots of ventriloquism are ancient. Some claim that possessed people mentioned in the Bible were just ventriloquists, and the case has been made that diviners in many religions, including perhaps the Oracle of Delphi, were ventriloquists, or as they were once called, "Belly Talkers."
The version of ventriloquism with which most people are familiar, ventriloquism as entertainment, began in the days of Vaudeville in the late 19th century. The vaudeville acts did not concentrate on humor as much as on demonstrating the ventriloquist's ability to deceive the audience and his skill in switching voices. For this reason, many of the performers used multiple figures, switching quickly from one voice to another. Jules Vernon was one of the more famous American vaudeville ventriloquists who used multiple figures. Perhaps the most famous vaudeville ventriloquist, however, The Great Lester, used only one figure, Frank Byron, Jr, and it is the Great Lester's success which paved the way for the one ventriloquist with one figure routine which is so common today.
Ventriloquism was immensely popular in the middle of the 20th century, thanks in great part to the work of one of the Great Lester's students, Edgar Bergen. Bergen popularized the idea of the comedic ventriloquist, and together with his favorite figure, Charlie McCarthy, hosted a radio program that, in the 1930s and early 1940s, was the number one program on the night it aired. Bergen continued performing until his death in 1979, and his popularity inspired many other famous ventriloquists who followed him, including Paul Winchell, Jimmy Nelson, and Senor Wences.
See List of ventriloquists.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Ventriloquism."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Voice | Gastriloquism, ventriloquism; ventriloquist; polyphonism, polyphonist. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Ventriloquist |
| English words defined with "ventriloquist": Engastrimuth ♦ Gastriloquist, Gastromyth ♦ Onappo ♦ Polyphonist ♦ ventriloquist's dummy, Ventriloquize, Ventriloquous. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "ventriloquist": Ventriloquous. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Tongue Twisters | What veteran ventriloquist whistles? (references; author: unknown) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Ventriloquist Cat (1950) The Ventriloquist (1921) Mister ventriloquist (1980) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Ventriloquist with two puppets. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | McKinley the ventriloquist. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | He was a ventriloquist. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "Ventriloquist" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 94.59% of the time. "Ventriloquist" is used about 37 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 94.59% | 35 | 58,339 |
| Noun (proper) | 5.41% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 37 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "ventriloquist": ventriloquist monkey. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "ventriloquist"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | njeri që flet me bark. (various references) | |
Arabic | متكلم من بطنه. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | вентрилоквист. (various references) | |
Farsi | کسیکه بجای عروسک یاجانوری تکلم کند. (various references) | |
French | ventriloque. (various references) | |
German | Bauchredner (ventriloquists). (various references) | |
Greek | εγγαστρίμυθοσ. (various references) | |
Hungarian | hasbeszélõ, hasbeszélő. (various references) | |
Italian | ventriloquo. (various references) | |
Manx | bolg-loayrtagh (ventriloquial), bolg-loayreyder. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | entriloquistvay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | ventríloquo. (various references) | |
Romanian | ventriloc. (various references) | |
Russian | чревовещатель. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | ventrilokvista, osoba koja govori iz stomaka. (various references) | |
Spanish | ventrílocuo. (various references) | |
Swedish | buktalare. (various references) | |
Turkish | vantrilok, karnından konuşan kimse. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | черевомовець. (various references) | |
Vietnamese | người nói tiếng bụng. (various references) | |
Welsh | tafleisydd. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "ventriloquist": ventriloquistic, ventriloquists. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| Words rhyming with "ventriloquist" (pronounced 'Ven*tril"o*quist'): Acquist, Antiloquist, Antiquist, Colloquist, Gastriloquist, somniloquist, Utraquist. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-i-i-l-n-o-q-r-s-t-t-u-v" | |
-3 letters: lentivirus. | |
-4 letters: intitules, intrusive, involutes, nutritive, outliners, outlivers, quintiles, quitrents, quotients, revulsion, squintier, troilites, trotlines, turnstile. | |
-5 letters: elutions, evulsion, inquiets, inquires, insulter, intitles, intitule, introits, investor, inviters, involute, lintiest, lioniser, lutenist, neuritis, nitriles, nitrites, novelist, olivines, outliers, outliner, outlines, outliver, outlives, question, quietist, quilters, quintets, quintile, quitrent, quitters, quittors, quotient, retinols, revision, rilievos. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-i-i-l-n-o-q-r-s-t-t-u-v" | |
+1 letter: ventriloquists. | |
+2 letters: ventriloquistic. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Quotations: Fiction 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Expressions 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Derivations | 13. Rhymes 14. Anagrams 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
