The process of removing vowel sounds from speech or written text, making words harder to pronounce clearly.
From de- (remove) + vocalize (make vocal sounds), with the British -ising suffix. The term emerged in linguistics in the 20th century to describe phonological processes.
Linguists discovered that when people whisper, they're essentially devokalizing—removing those vowel vibrations that normally carry so much of a word's identity. It's why whispers are so hard to understand from far away!
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