How to Use sotto voce in a Sentence

sotto voce

adverb or adjective
  • Then Ansari dials down his loud and nasal drawl to sotto voce.
    Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 13 July 2019
  • When asking you to put your phone away, the gentleman should have gone sotto voce.
    Amy Dickinson, chicagotribune.com, 5 May 2018
  • There were some things (spoken about sotto voce) to like about the pandemic shutdown.
    Joel Achenbach, Anchorage Daily News, 12 Mar. 2023
  • Italy has always had a way with such sotto voce style, thanks to its history with fabric mills and leather goods.
    Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 26 Feb. 2023
  • Lakeith Stanfield plumbs new depths of sotto voce silkiness as Cherokee Bill, the quickest of quick-draw artists.
    Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct. 2021
  • Who among us hasn’t fallen asleep to Jim Nantz’s soothing sotto voce during Masters weekend?
    Jason Gay, WSJ, 23 Aug. 2018
  • In the background, his parents contend sotto voce with his fixation.
    John Lahr, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2019
  • At school the next day, other kids keep giving Tati knowing looks and making snickering, sotto voce comments.
    Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter, 23 Jan. 2018
  • That's not to denigrate Auerbach, whose almost sotto voce delivery gives the songs their own meaning.
    Chuck Yarborough, cleveland.com, 4 May 2018
  • As fine as some of those performances have been, no one has accurately captured her throaty, sotto voce verbal style or mordant wit.
    Washington Post, 28 Sep. 2020
  • The reason for McCarthy’s withdrawal remains the source of much sotto voce speculation.
    Philip Elliott, Time, 1 June 2018
  • Where many bars play a top-40 playlist from thumping speakers, a recent arrival to San Francisco’s downtown scene is setting the tone with vinyl records and intimate, sotto voce chatter.
    Mario Cortez, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 Oct. 2022
  • But this will also be a contrast in demeanors: Halep’s loud grunts and emotional expressiveness with Stephens’s sotto voce on-court zenitude.
    Christopher Clarey, New York Times, 7 June 2018
  • All of these conflicts, and many more, are depicted with comedy ranging from wry to antic, from sotto voce to turbulently physical.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 4 Oct. 2021
  • But until fairly recently, the symptoms of this physical experience have been cloaked in banal terms, uttered sotto voce if at all.
    Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sep. 2022
  • His vibratoless, nasal-toned, sotto voce croon floated with seeming detachment above his guitar.
    Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 6 July 2019
  • As one on-site vendor noted (in a conspiratorial sotto voce), a number of the women showing dogs on Saturday sported spring-season St. John suits, which commonly retail for more than $1000.
    Washington Post, 14 June 2021
  • The equation that inflation equals political unravelling and war may be sotto voce today but remains embedded in central bank DNA.
    Zachary Karabell, Time, 17 Oct. 2022
  • As for the politics, consider the persistently leftward tilt of American art culture ever since—a residual hankering, however sotto voce, to change the world.
    Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2020
  • His Conservative rivals and some skeptics in Liberal Party circles had already been asking, sotto voce, who exactly that person was.
    David Shribman, Los Angeles Times, 21 Sep. 2019
  • In remarkable scenes that flustered even the sotto voce BBC commentators, opposition lawmakers threw themselves at the silk-canopied speaker’s chair, trying in vain to keep him from getting to his feet and allowing Parliament to be suspended.
    BostonGlobe.com, 11 Sep. 2019
  • According to the Democratic nominee, there's a particular breed of Obamaniacs who approach him after events to confess their Obamania--sotto voce.
    Newsweek, 14 Mar. 2018
  • Sash credits the grit of having forever lived in New York as abetting the darkest vibes and shadowy nuances of his coolly seductive music, with its sotto voce quietude and beautiful melodicism coming from an early appreciation of jazz.
    A.d. Amorosi, Variety, 11 Nov. 2022
  • Among many AfD voters, resistance to immigration has called forth other resentments, from feelings of economic disadvantage to frustration with post-war Germany’s sotto voce approach to national identity.
    Zeke Turner, WSJ, 27 Sep. 2017
  • Openly cooperating with Israel without resolving the future of Jerusalem and its Islamic holy sites surely would provoke opposition from religious Saudis, though only sotto voce given the crown prince’s severe repression of domestic opponents.
    Karen Elliott House, WSJ, 6 Jan. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sotto voce.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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