vox humana

From Latin vōx hūmāna.

vox humana (plural vox humanas)

1. An organ stop having some resemblance to the human voice.
   • 1940, John Betjeman, “In Westminster Abbey”, in Old Lights for New Chancels:

     Let me take this other glove off / As the vox humana swells, / And the beauteous fields of Eden / Bask beneath the Abbey bells.

   • 1969, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., chapter 2 (pages 19–42), in Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-dance with Death, Vintage edition (1991 paperback), London: Vintage Books, published 2000, →ISBN, page 25:

     While on maneuvers in South Carolina, Billy played hymns he knew from childhood, played them on a little black organ which was waterproof. It had thirty-nine keys and two stops — vox humana and vox celeste.^[sic]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈwoːks huːˈmaː.na]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈvɔks uˈmaː.na]

vōx hūmāna f (genitive vōcis hūmānae); third declension

1. the human voice
2. what a person would say

Third-declension noun with a first-declension adjective.