Sotto Voice

By Deane Barker • •
Updates
This content has been updated 2 times since it was first published. The last update happened .

This describes when someone says something softly, so other people won’t overhear, often to secretly pass instructions to the listener.

It’s from the Italian “sotto voce,” which literally means “under the voice.” It has history as stage direction during performances.

Why I Looked It Up

During an episode of Chuck, a character said something to another character quietly, and the closed caption was prefaced with “SOTTO VOICE:” It happened twice in the same episode.

Update

Added on

From the novel Reamde:

She was pretty sure she heard the word for “Russian” too. But it was difficult to make anything out, since all of the conversations were sotto voce, and anyone who raised his voice to a conversational level was glared at and hushed.

Update

Added on

From Valerie Plame-Wilson’s book Fair Game:

On the professional front, my colleagues at the CIA tried to respect my privacy and offer their support sotto voce, when they could.

Note the usage of “voce” here, which is Italian for “voice.”

Links from this – Reamde September 6, 2022
An absolutely fantastic novel. Very, very long, but it never slows down. It’s more Tom Clancy than cyberpunk. A MMOPRG does play a part in the plot, but it’s more about globe-hopping and gunfights than computers. You know how when you read about ransomware attacks from Asia, you think, “Man, I wish...
Links from this – Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House May 11, 2023
This is the inside story of The Plame Affair – the revelation that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative, allegedly initiated by the Bush White House because Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, had been critical of the administration’s reasoning for starting the Iraq War. The most obvious part of this book is...