ventriloquist
(vɛnˈtrɪləkwɪst)
[f. ventriloqu-y + -ist.]
One who practises, or is expert in, ventriloquy or ventriloquism; spec. in modern use, one who gives public exhibitions of his skill in this art.
With early quots. cf. prec. 2. The modern application (corresponding to ventriloquism 1) appears just before 1800.
| 1656 Blount Glossogr., Ventriloquist, one that hath an evil spirit speaking in his belly, or one that by use and practise can speak as it were out of his belly, not moving his lips. 1681 H. More in Glanvill's Sadducismus i. Postscr. (1726) 19 Who knows but some of his counterfeit Ventriloquists may prove true ones. 1718 F. Hutchinson Witchcraft 11 There are also many that can form Words and Voices in their Stomach, which shall seem to come from others rather than the Person that speaks them. Such people are call'd Engastriloques, or Ventriloquists. 1749 Wesley Wks. (1872) IX. 7 There was a compact..between the ventriloquist and the exorcist. 1797 Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3) XVIII. 639/2 As the ancient ventriloquists, when exercising their art, seemed generally to speak from their own bellies, the name..was abundantly significant. 1815 Stage I. 176 A ventriloquist at Paris has attracted the attention of the whole metropolis. 1840 Dickens Old C. Shop xix, And pale slender women with consumptive faces lingered upon the footsteps of ventriloquists and conjurors. 1893 R. Ganthony Pract. Ventriloquism 147 It is curious that Ventriloquists are nearly all English. |
| fig. c 1819 Coleridge Rem. (1836) II. 317 The scenes are mock dialogues in which the poet solus plays the ventriloquist. 1885 Pall Mall G. 10 Jan. 1/1 The ‘Ventriloquist of Varzin’, who can pull the strings of three Imperial Chancelleries. |
| attrib. 1850 N. & Q. Ser. i. II. 101 It can hardly be doubted that the Archbishop's miracle was a ventriloquist hoax. |
b. Applied to birds or animals. Also
attrib.| 1802 Paley Nat. Theol. x. §5 A tuneful bird is a ventriloquist. The seat of the song is in the breast. 1879 Jefferies Wild Life 218 The belief that the [corn-]crake is a ventriloquist. 1895 Funk's Stand. Dict., Onappo (Braz[il]), a reddish-gray nyctipithecine monkey or teetee (Callithrix discolor). Called also ventriloquist-monkey. |