vocal fry

From the resemblance of the noise to the sound of hot fat sputtering in a skillet.

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vocal fry (uncountable)

1. A low creaky vocal vibration caused by rapid vibration of the vocal chords, common in some languages such as Finnish. In English, often associated with older Received Pronunciation and more recent North American speech patterns.

   Synonyms: creaky voice, glottal fry, (rare) popcorning

   • 1975, Hilda B. Fisher, Improving voice and articulation, page 158:

     Some individuals have overlooked the fact that at such low pitch their voices fade to inaudibility at the ends of sentences, or scrape down to vocal fry.

   • 2004, Lloyd M. Hulit, Straight Talk on Stuttering, →ISBN, page 55:

     It is perhaps easiest to see the superimposition of vocal fry, so we will begin with this behavior.

   • 2011 December 9, Marissa Fessenden, “'Vocal Fry' Creeping Into U.S. Speech”, in Science:

     Pop singers, such as Britney Spears, slip vocal fry into their music as a way to reach low notes and add style.

   • 2014, Matthew Edwards, So You Want to Sing Rock 'n' Roll: A Guide for Professionals, →ISBN, page 112:

     Vocal fry is safe as long as you do not do it too loudly or for too long.

   • 2022, Bronya Roni Chernyak, Talia Ben Simon, Yael Segal, Jeremy Steffman, Eleanor Chodroff, “DeepFry: Identifying Vocal Fry Using Deep Neural Networks”, in Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association‎^[1], →DOI, pages 3578–3582:

     Vocal fry or creaky voice refers to a voice quality characterized by irregular glottal opening and low pitch. It occurs in diverse languages and is prevalent in American English, where it is used not only to mark phrase finality, but also sociolinguistic factors and affect.

   • 2024 May 20, Alissa Wilkinson, “What We Lose When ChatGPT Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Yes, you can detect a bit of Johansson’s clear, low tone and a hint of vocal fry, though at times that just sounds like some grainy digitalization.