v. [f. as prec. + -IZE.]
1. intr. To use or practise ventriloquism; to speak or produce sounds in the manner of a ventriloquist; to cast the voice.
1844. H. Stephens, Bk. Farm, I. 297. When the corn-crake … ventriloquises in the corn or grass.
1846. Landor, Imag. Conv., Wks. I. 148/2. The horses capered and neighed and ventriloquized right and left.
1855. Kingsley, Westw. Ho! ii. Leave thy caverned grumblings,… and discourse eloquence from thy central omphalos, like Pythoness ventriloquising.
1879. Jefferies, Wild Life in S. Co., 219. Some say in like manner that the starling ventriloquizes.
fig. 1832. Coleridge, Table-t., 21 July. I have no admiration for the practice of ventriloquizing through another man’s mouth.
1890. Spectator, 1 Nov. It looks as if the new Radicalism had entered into his soul and were ventriloquising through his organisation.
2. trans. To utter as a ventriloquist.
1865. Spectator, 14 Jan., 45. It is a falsehood ventriloquizing truth.
1871. Farrar, Witn. Hist., iv. 131. The little Temple, up which the priests … crept to ventriloquise behind the deceptive statue their lying oracles.
1900. Daily News, 18 July, 2/5. He not only mimics but ventriloquises his imitations.
Hence Ventriloquizing vbl. sb. Also attrib.
1805. Eugenia de Acton, Nuns of Desert, II. 52. Mrs. Mervin’s ventriloquising powers, exhibited in the church of the Convent.
