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
  • Like the man himself, the house speaks of quality sotto voce.
    — Rachel Davies, Architectural Digest, 16 Dec. 2025
  • 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
  • In the background, his parents contend sotto voce with his fixation.
    — John Lahr, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2019
  • Sometimes the subject is discussed openly, sometimes sotto voce.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 27 Nov. 2023
  • What every person is figuring out, sotto voce or at full volume, is how they are meant to carry on without their person.
    — Marley Marius, Vogue, 3 Aug. 2024
  • The sotto voce liftoff exhaust note in Dynamic mode raises goose pimples, but then the noise at high revs kills the acoustic joy.
    — Georg Kacher, Car and Driver, 12 May 2023
  • 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
  • This isn’t a grabby, attention seeker of a film, but a quiet, watchful sort of movie that whispers its secrets sotto voce.
    — Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 13 May 2026
  • 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
  • Who among us hasn’t fallen asleep to Jim Nantz’s soothing sotto voce during Masters weekend?
    — Jason Gay, WSJ, 23 Aug. 2018
  • The first and rarest category involved sotto voce confessions of personal tree-felling or maiming episodes.
    — Rosa Lyster, Harpers Magazine, 30 Dec. 2025
  • Lakeith Stanfield plumbs new depths of sotto voce silkiness as Cherokee Bill, the quickest of quick-draw artists.
    — Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct. 2021
  • That same week Loro Piana, the century-old stalwart of sotto voce eleganza, opened a new boutique in the town.
    — Leena Kim, Town & Country, 25 Apr. 2023
  • 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
  • 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
  • The classic Calatrava, with its sleek lines and pure form, is a horological master class in sotto voce eleganza.
    — Leena Kim, Town & Country, 1 Sep. 2023
  • The reason for McCarthy’s withdrawal remains the source of much sotto voce speculation.
    — Philip Elliott, Time, 1 June 2018
  • The result has been a more dynamic broadcast that has captured sotto voce moments among members not typically witnessed by the general public — and some have gone viral online.
    — Michael M. Grynbaum, New York Times, 6 Jan. 2023
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Romney told McKay Coppins something that other Republicans have addressed, usually sotto voce.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 16 Oct. 2023
  • 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

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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