means A system that records a spoken message when someone can't or won't answer the phone, storing it for the recipient to retrieve later.

from A straightforward American compound of "voice" and "mail," coined in the early 1980s as telephone-answering technology went digital — built on the model of "email," which had arrived just slightly earlier. The "mail" half stretches an old word (from Old French 'male,' a traveler's bag or pouch) far beyond its leather-satchel origins: by this point "mail" simply meant "messages delivered," whether by horse, wire, or recorded breath.