aphonia
1
9.9
- noun
- /əˈfoʊniə/
- Specialized
:
afonía
- Following the surgery on her vocal cords, the singer was diagnosed with aphonia and couldn't speak for weeks.
Examples
-
Narcosynthesis would be useless until we overcome the aphonia.
-
Aphonia.
Fiction book (1993) -
- What's aphonia?
-
Silence is manipulated: Weiner introduces a white sound, an aphonia, a track of non-sound.
Academic text (1999) -
A three-year-old child, recently part of a voice (speech and singing) study, displays pronounced aphonia (a sporadic lack of voiced sound when speaking or singing - the voice "cuts out").
Academic text (2005) -
After losing her voice to a severe cold, she experienced complete aphonia and could only communicate by writing.
-
The doctor explained that aphonia can be caused by stress or trauma, leading to a temporary inability to produce sound.
Synonyms
3
9.2
A condition where a person does not speak because of a physical or mental problem
1
6.8
Not speaking because someone cannot or chooses not to speak
1
8.3
When a person cannot speak because of a problem with the throat or vocal cords
1
9.9
A condition in which a person cannot speak but can still understand language
A condition where the vocal cords cannot move and a person cannot speak
Complete or almost complete loss of ability to move the mouth and tongue to speak after brain damage
Antonyms
How Vocal
Surface Forms
Morphology
aphonia = phon (opaque) = a + phon + ia
The prefix 'a-' denotes absence, but the medical context and specific meaning of 'aphonia' are not immediately clear from its parts.
Etymology
Aphonia comes from Greek parts a- meaning 'without' and phonē meaning 'voice' or 'sound', the same root you hear in phone ('voice'). So aphonia literally means 'without voice', which explains why it refers to losing the ability to speak.