voluntary

1. 1.

   of your own free will or design; done by choice; not forced or compelled

   “man is a voluntary agent”

   “participation was voluntary”

   “voluntary manslaughter”

   “voluntary generosity in times of disaster”

   “voluntary social workers”

   “a voluntary confession”

   Antonymsinvoluntary

   Similarwillfulfreewillself-imposeduncoercedunpaid
2. 2.

   controlled by individual volition

   “voluntary motions”

   “voluntary muscles”

   Antonymsinvoluntary

   physiology

Other forms of voluntary

plural

voluntaries·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about voluntary

What does voluntary mean?

voluntary means "(military) a person who freely enlists for service". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in voluntary?

voluntary has 4 syllables: vo-lun-ta-ry. The stress falls on "vo". In IPA it is /ˈvɑləntɛɹi/.

What is another word for voluntary?

Close synonyms include volunteer, military volunteer. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of voluntary?

The recorded antonyms are involuntary, involuntary.

Is voluntary a common word?

voluntary is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.