# speech

Pronunciation: say "SPEECH" /spiːt͡ʃ/

## Noun

1. A formal spoken address delivered publicly by one person, usually at some length.
   - Simple: A talk that one person gives out loud to a group of people.
   - _The senator's speech lasted nearly an hour._
   - _He rehearsed his wedding speech a dozen times._
2. The act of speaking, or a particular manner of it.
   - Simple: The way a person talks, or the act of talking.
   - _His slurred speech made it clear he was exhausted._
   - _The coach was known for her blunt, forceful speech._
3. Language as it is spoken aloud, rather than written.
   - Simple: Words said out loud instead of written down.
   - _Casual speech tends to use shorter sentences than formal writing._
   - _Many slang terms appear in speech long before they reach print._
4. The capacity to speak: to produce words and articulate sounds in order to communicate.
   - Simple: The power to speak and make words with your voice.
   - _The injury affected her speech for several months._
   - _Speech sets humans apart from nearly all other animals._
5. A regional dialect or vernacular; in former usage, a full language.
   - Simple: A way of speaking that belongs to a certain place or group of people.
   - _The old shepherd spoke in a rough mountain speech few outsiders understood._
   - _Travelers noted that the island's speech differed sharply from the mainland's._
7. Words someone said, as reproduced in a sentence or text: quoted exactly in direct speech, or recast in reported speech.
   - Simple: What someone said, either repeated in their exact words or told again in other words.
   - _In direct speech, the speaker's exact words appear between quotation marks._
   - _In reported speech, "I'm leaving" usually becomes "She said that she was leaving."_
8. A line or unbroken passage of lines delivered by a single character in a play.
   - Simple: The words one character says in a play before another character speaks.
   - _The actor forgot half of his long speech in the second act and had to improvise._
   - _The director cut two of the duke's speeches to keep the play under three hours._

## Noun

6. Public talk; the news, gossip, or rumor circulating among people. *(dated)*
   - Simple: Talk that spreads among many people, like gossip or rumor.

## Other meanings

- (verb) To deliver a speech; to address people at length, often in a forceful or hectoring manner.

## Origin

From Middle English speche, from Old English spǣċ (also sprǣċ, "speech, discourse, language"), going back through Proto-West Germanic to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to make a sound." It is related to Dutch spraak and German Sprache.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/speech (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).