speech
The ability to speak; the faculty of uttering words or articulate sounds and vocalizations to communicate.
Noun
- The ability to speak; the faculty of uttering words or articulate sounds and vocalizations to communicate.
- He had a bad speech impediment.
- After the accident she lost her speech.
- All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present...
- The act of speaking, a certain style of it.
- It was hard to hear his speech over the noise.
- Her speech was soft and lilting.
- Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated. - 2014 April 21, “Subtle...
- A formal session of speaking, especially a long oral message given publicly by one person.
- The candidate made some ambitious promises in his campaign speech.
- The constant design of both these orators, in all their speeches, was to drive some one particular point. - 1720, Jonathan Swift, A Letter to a Young Clergyman:
- He's going to present the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School. We've been caught short as usual, and somebody has got to make a speech on ideals and the great world outside to those blasted boys, so he fits in...
Synonyms: address allocution monologue oration soliloquy
- A dialect, vernacular, or (dated) a language.
- For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech, and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel. - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 3:6:
- The speche of Englande is a base speche to other noble speches, as Italion, Castylion, and Frenche; howbeit the speche of Englande of late dayes is amended. - 1542, Andrew Boorde, The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of...
- Language used orally, rather than in writing.
- This word is mostly used in speech.
- An utterance that is quoted; see direct speech, reported speech
- Public talk, news, gossip, rumour.
- The duke[…]did of me demand / What was the speech among the Londoners / Concerning the French journey. - 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the...
Origin
From Middle English speche, from Old English spǣċ, sprǣċ (“speech, discourse, language”), from Proto-West Germanic *sprāku (“speech, language”), from Proto-Indo-European *spereg-, *spreg- (“to make a sound”). Cognate with Dutch spraak (“speech”), German Sprache (“language, speech”). More at speak.
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Derived
acceptance speech antispeech audio-visual speech recognition avoidance speech by-speech caretaker speech child-directed speech compelled speech co-speech counterspeech cyberspeech endspeech figure of speech finger speech free as in speech freedom of speech free indirect speech free speech free speech zone furspeech hate-speech hate speech helium speech impulsive speech
Verb
- To make (a speech); to harangue.
- I'll speech against peace while Dismal's my name, / And be a true whig, while I'm Not-in-game. - 1711 [December?] (date written), Jonathan Swift, “An Excellent New Song. Being the Intended Speech of a Famous Orator...
- So to Speeching he did go, / And like a Man of Senſe, / He certainly ſaid Ay or No, - 1731, The Statesman: A New Court Ballad, page 7:
- Two lawyers who had come over from Williamsburg to make speeches in honor of Battery Dan were told by Lawyer William J. Caffrey that only Manhattanites would be allowed to speak. “If you let my friend speech something,”...