voicemail

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,285 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: voicemails

Voicemail is a recorded message left when a call is not answered. Leave a voicemail, check your voicemail, a voicemail from her.

It is both the system and the message. Its use has fallen sharply as messaging has taken over, and a whole generation now regards a voicemail as slightly alarming — nobody leaves one for a small matter. The word is voice plus mail, coined in the 1980s. Note that voicemail interception was at the centre of the British phone hacking scandal.

Definitions of voicemail

1nounvoicemailA recorded message left when a call is not answered.B1+
“He didn't answer, so I left a voicemail asking him to call me back.”

voicemail is a recorded message.

Where it comes from

Voice plus mail, coined in the 1980s on the model of email. Mail comes from Old French male, a bag, so all these words descend from a travelling bag.

From voice + mail.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Office & Admin

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voicemail in the wild

Calls may be directed to voicemail manually or automatically.
Voicemail
Visual voicemail is direct-access voicemail with a visual interface.
Visual voicemail
Other phone system vendors are now also offering these features for internal voicemail users.
Visual voicemail
UC also links with non-real-time services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS, and fax).
Unified communications
For example, one can receive a voicemail message and choose to access it through e-mail or a cell phone.
Unified communications

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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