speech
(spitʃ)
n.
1. the faculty or power of speaking; ability to express one's thoughts and emotions by speech sounds.
2. the act of speaking.
3. something that is spoken; an utterance.
4. a form of communication in spoken language, made by a speaker before an audience.
5. any single utterance of an actor in the course of a play, film, etc.
6. the form of utterance characteristic of a particular people or region; a language or dialect.
7. manner of speaking, as of a person.
8. a field of study devoted to the theory and practice of oral communication.
9. any public form of
expression, as
spoken or
written language, visual depictions, or
expressive actions. Compare freedom of speech.
10. Archaic. rumor.
[before 900; Middle English speche, Old English spǣc, variant of
sprǣc, derivative of
sprecan to
speak]
syn: speech,
address,
oration,
harangue are terms for a
communication to an
audience. speech is
the general word, with no
implication of
kind or
length, or
whether planned or
not. An
address is a
rather formal, planned speech,appropriate to a
particular subject or
occasion. An
oration is a
polished, rhetorical address, given usu. on a
notable occasion, that employs eloquence and studied methods of
delivery. A
harangue is an
impassioned, vehementspeech intended to
arouse strong feeling and sometimes to
lead to
mob action.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
Speech
1. an incorrectness in diction.
2. cacology. — acyrological, adj.
Medicine. an inability to speak, especially as the result of a brain lesion.
Pathology. an impairment or loss of the faculty of understanding or using spoken or written language. — aphasiac, n. — aphasic, n., adj.
loss of the power of speech; dumbness. — aphonic, — apho-nous, adj.
loss or absence of the power of speech.
the ability to speak in two distinct voices. — biloquist, n.
1. a defectively produced speech.
2. socially unacceptable enunciation.
3. nonconformist pronunciation.
the condition of lacking both hearing and speech. Also called surdomutism. — deafmute, n.
Pathology. an inability to express ideas or reasoning in speech because of a mental disorder.
an impaired state of the power of speech or of the ability to comprehend language, caused by injury to the brain.
any neurotic disorder of speech; stammering.
speech problems resulting from damage to or malformation of the speech organs.
the uncontrollable and immediate repetition of sounds and words heard from others. — echolalic, adj.
1. the art of public speaking.
2. the manner or quality of a person’s speech. — elocutionist, n.
confused or unintelligible speech; gibberish.
an instrument for recording the movements of the tongue during speech.
an ecstatic, usually unintelligible speech uttered in the worship services of any of several sects stressing emotionality and religious fervor. Also called speaking in tongues. — glossolalist, n.
an abnormal fear of speaking in public or of trying to speak.
a throaty manner of speaking.
a condition in which control of the speech organs is lost, resulting in meaningless and deranged speech.
a tendency to articulate sounds with the lips rounded.
an abnormal love of speech or talking.
the branch of medical science that studies disorders of speech. — lalopathy, n. — lalopathic, adj.
an abnormal fear of speaking.
Pathology. the science that studies speech defects and their treatment. Also logopedics, logopaedics. — logopedie, logopaedic, adj.
a pathological speech problem, as stammering.
Psychiatry. a conscious or unconscious refusal to make verbal responses to questions, present in some mental disorders.
any speech that contains new words unintelligible to a
hearer. See also psychology.
Obsolete, loss of speech or the act of keeping silence.
a speech defect or disorder in which sounds are distorted.
a disorder of the faculty of reasoning, characterized by discon-nected and meaningless speech.
aphasia characterized by the inability to find the correct words to express meaning.
garbled or incoherent speech, the result of aphasia.
speaking from the chest, a phenomenon observed with a stethoscope and caused by the voice reverberating in the lung cavities as a result of disease. — pectoriloquial, pectoriloquous, adj.
the condition of stuttering or stammering.
a mechanical, repetitive, and usually meaningless speech.
deafmutism. — surdomute, n.
1. the act or process of whispering.
2. a whispering sound or soft rustling. Also susurrus. — susurrant, susurrous, adj.
an abnormality of speech characterized by extreme volubility.
repetition of the same sound. — tautophonic, tautophonical, adj.
a stammering and stuttering speech.
ventriloquism.
the art or practice of speaking so that the voice seems not to come from the speaker but from another source, as from a mechanical doll. Also called ventriloquy, ventrilocution, gastriloquism. — ventriloquist, n. — ven-triloquistic, adj.
meaningless repetition of words and phrases.
-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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