voice-over

[vois-oh-ver]

noun

Movies, Television.

1. the voice of an offscreen narrator, announcer, or the like.

2. a televised sequence, as in a commercial, using such a voice.

3. any offscreen voice, as that of a character in a narrative.

voice-over

noun

1. the voice of an unseen commentator heard during a film, television programme, etc

Word History and Origins

Origin of voice-over¹

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

These intrepid journalists couldn’t foresee the invasion that was coming, nor the brutal local crackdown on free speech in its wake, but Loktev makes those dire certainties clear from the start, solemnly intoning in voice-over, “The world you’re about to see no longer exists.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

In a voice-over, we’re told that some musicians have the gift to make music so powerful it can summon spirits from the past and the future.

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In her voice-over, Farsi describes meeting Hassona as if encountering a mirror, realizing “how much both our lives are conditioned by walls and wars.”

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Rather than losing those sentences entirely, Bentley and Kwedar tucked them into judicious passages of voice-over narration by Will Patton, who had also recorded the audiobook.

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In a behind-the-scenes film shared by Coke, a voice-over discusses the “team of artists” who “work frame-by-frame, often pixel-by-pixel” to touch up and tweak the festive images generated by the AI.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• comment 
• criticism 
• critique 
• description 
• explanation 
• narration 
• observation 
• remark 
• review 
• treatise