[L. vox (pl. vōcēs), voice.]
1. Vox populi, the voice of the people; expressed general opinion; common talk or rumor.
The Latin maxim Vox populi vox Dei ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God,’ is freq. cited or alluded to in English works from the 15th cent. onwards.
a. 1550. in Skelton’s Wks. (1843), II. 409/1. A wonderfull sorte of selles, That vox populi telles, Of those bottomlesse welles.
1570. R. Constable, in Sadler’s St. Papers (1809), II. 388. I hard vox populi that the lord regent would not, for his owne honor,… deliver thearls.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., IX. 787. No publicke fame, nor vox popli Was ever knowen in vaine to die.
1671. E. Howard, Six Days Adventure, Pref. A 4. There being nothing more unstable or erroneous than vox populi in point of plays.
1774. (title) Vox populi, or Old England’s Glory a Destruction in 1774.
1822. Galt, Sir A. Wylie, xcvi. ‘O,…—just a wheen havers!’ replied Bell—‘causey talk—Vox populi!’
1867. E. FitzGerald, Lett. (1889), I. 308. Well, but I believe in the Vox Populi of two hundred Years: still more of two thousand.
2. Vox angelica, vox humana (or † humane), varieties of organ-stops imitative of vocal sounds. Also attrib.
a. 1726. Tudway, in Burney, Hist. Music (1776), IV. 355. These [stops] were the Vox-humane,… with some others I may have forgot.
1776. Burney, Hist. Misic, IV. 147. Of pipes thus constructed are composed the stops called the Vox-humana, Regal,… and many others.
1852. Seidel, Organ, 21. In the seventeenth century several registers were … inserted, among which we may mention the vox humana, and the vox angelica.
1885. Vox Humana, 3. The effect of the Vox Humana stop … is to make the organ sound like a choir of human voices.
