lower voice

lower (one's) voice

To speak in a hushed town or at a lower volume. Could everyone please lower their voices? The children are sleeping right above us upstairs. I lowered my voice as I entered the chapel.
See also: lower, voice
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

lower one's voice

Fig. to speak more softly. Please lower your voice or you'll disturb the people who are working. He wouldn't lower his voice, so everyone heard what he said.
See also: lower, voice
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • lower (one's) voice
  • bid (something) down
  • bid down
  • bidding
  • bargain (someone or something) down
  • bargain down
  • the great unwashed
  • unwashed
  • Great Unwashed
  • great unwashed, the
References in classic literature
'Commend me, captain, to the stricken Miggs,' returned the torch- bearer in a lower voice. 'My captain flies at higher game than Miggses.
"Monseigneur de Bragelonne colored, and replied, in a lower voice,
She spoke in a lower voice as if David must not hear.
He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower voice, after a pause:
Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, 'did you read to your father, Jupe?'
A liar too,' he added, in a lower voice as he drew closer to me, 'who knows how dear she is to me, and seeks to wound me even there, because there is a stranger nearby.'
Horne Fisher answered, in a lower voice: "Yes; and I hope to be lucky enough to catch him before dinner.
"I'm rather afraid," said Fisher, in a lower voice, "that it's becoming more of a mania than a hobby.
It is most undesirable--(especially when people swallow in lumps!)" she added in a lower voice.
Steady!' cried Eugene (he had recovered immediately on embarking), as they bumped heavily against a pile; and then in a lower voice reversed his late apostrophe by remarking ('I wish the boat of my honourable and gallant friend may be endowed with philanthropy enough not to turn bottom-upward and extinguish us!) Steady, steady!
Crisparkle, for finding ourselves outside the walls of the Nuns' House, and that we who undertook the formation of the future wives and mothers of England (the last words in a lower voice, as requiring to be communicated in confidence) were really bound
'Do you happen to know, Mrs Clennam,' Affery's liege lord then demanded in a much lower voice, and with an amount of expression that seemed quite out of proportion to the simple purpose of his words, 'where she lives?'
Looking from one to another she saw that something had happened, and she asked, in a lower voice: "What's the matter?"
Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker, and, in a lower voice still, repeated the solemn words, "My beloved husband is no more."
The concert had opened with mezzo-soprano Polly Leech as a soloist in another Elgar work, Sea Pictures, a piece originally written for soprano but given greater warmth and depth by its conversion to the lower voice. And what gorgeously dark tones Leech can produce, the lyrics by various poets may be fairly trivial, but the sound was wonderful.