speech

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Oral communication

Nouns

1. speech, talk, faculty of speech; locution, parlance, expression, vernacular, oral communication, word of mouth, parole, palaver, prattle; effusion, discourse; soliloquy; interlocution, conversation; loquacity. Informal, gab, confab, powwow, corroboree. See sound, language.

2. (formal speaking)

a. speechifying, oration, recitation, delivery, peroration, valedictory, monologue, sales talk; oratory, elocution, eloquence; rhetoric, declamation; bombast, grandiloquence; burst of eloquence; fecundity; flow or command of language; power of speech, gift of gab, blarney. Slang, spiel, line, earful, pep talk.

b. allocution, exhortation, appeal, harangue, lecture, sermon, tirade, diatribe, invocation.

3. (speech mechanism) vocalization, enunciation, articulation, delivery; expression, utterance; vociferation, exclamation, ejaculation; clearness, distinctness; whisper, stage whisper; ventriloquism, ventriloquy. See cry.

4. [public] speaker, spokesman; prolocutor, interlocutor; mouthpiece, orator; Demosthenes, Cicero; rhetorician; stump or platform orator; speech-maker, patterer, improvisator, monologist; gossip; singer (see music). Slang, talkmaster, flannel mouth.

5. (speech characteristics) accent, accentuation; inflection, intonation; tone of voice; emphasis, stress; brogue, burr; pronunciation, euphony.

6. (instrument of speech) voice, vocality; speaking or singing voice; larynx, voice box, glottis, vocal cords; voice print (see speciality); lung power.

7. pronunciation; orthoepy, phonetics, phonology; sound spectrogram or spectrograph; alveolar, dental, etc. sound (see

Adjectives); click, suction stop, consonant, continuant, plosive, stop; flap, click; schwa; primary or secondary accent or stress; monophthong, diphthong, triphthong, cardinal vowel, aspirate, short or long vowel; inflection, intonation, modulation; bilabial; brogue; accent.

Verbs

1. speak, talk, speak of; say, utter, pronounce, deliver, comment, remark, recite, voice, give utterance to, vocalize; breathe, let fall, come out with; rap out, blurt out; chatter, open one's mouth; lift or raise one's voice; speak one's mind; state, assert, declare announce, annunciate. Informal, go, gab, shoot one's mouth off, shoot the breeze, talk a blue streak. Slang, flap one's gums.

2. (deliver a speech) hold forth; make or deliver a speech, speechify, orate, declaim, stump, flourish, spout, rant, recite, discourse, have or say one's say, say or speak one's piece; expatiate, be eloquent, have the gift of gab; allocute, exhort, appeal, harangue, lecture, preach, invoke, sermonize.

3. (communicate through speech) soliloquize, apostrophize, talk to oneself; tell, impart, inform (see information); converse, speak to, talk together; communicate; divulge (see disclosure); express, phrase, put into words; translate, interpret.

4. enunciate, pronounce, articulate, verbalize, emit, give voice, let out, mention, bring up, expound, spell [out]; accentuate, aspirate; express oneself, think out loud or aloud, exclaim, ejaculate, cry; shout, yell, mouth. Informal, pipe up.

Adjectives

1. speaking, spoken; vocal, oral, lingual, phonetic, outspoken; eloquent, elocutionary; oratorical, rhetorical, flamboyant; declamatory, bombastic, grandiloquent; talkative (see loquacity).

2. alveolar, dental, dorsal, labial, labiodental, laminal, mouillé, nasal, uvular, voiced, voiceless, palatal, pharyngeal, obstruent, laryngeal, retroflex, glottal, guttural, sibilant, sonant, implosive, ingressive, interdental, egressive, ejective, fricative, spirant.

Adverbs — orally; vocally; by word of mouth, viva voce, from the lips of; loudly, out loud, aloud; softly, sotto voce.

Phrases — talk is cheap; think first and speak afterward.

Quotations — A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver (Bible), The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil (Bible), Speech is the small change of silence (George Meredith), I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady (G. B. Shaw), Refrain not to speak, when there is occasion to do good (Bible), Speech is a mirror of the soul; as a man speaks so he is (Publilius Syrus), Talkativeness is one thing, speaking well another (Sophocles), Great talkers, little doers (Benjamin Franklin), Here comes the orator! with his flood of words, and his drop of reason (Benjamin Franklin), If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it (Calvin Coolidge).

Antonyms, see silence, writing.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

1. [Language]

Syn. tongue, mother tongue, native tongue; see language 1 .

2. [The power of audible expression]

Syn. talk, utterance, discourse, conversation, articulation, oral expression, diction, pronunciation, expression, locution, vocalization, enunciation, palaver, communication, prattle, parlance, intercourse, chatter.

3. [An address]

Syn. lecture, discourse, oration, address, disquisition, harangue, oratory, sermon, dissertation, homily, recitation, prelection, allocation, talk, rhetoric, tirade, panegyric, bombast, diatribe, exhortation, eulogy, commentary, declamation, appeal, invocation, salutation, travelogue, valedictory, paper, stump, keynote address, political speech, speechification*, elocuting*, opus*, pep talk*, spiel*; see also communication 2 .

Syn.- speech is the general word for a discourse delivered to an audience, whether prepared or impromptu; address implies a formal, carefully prepared speech and usually attributes importance to the speaker or the speech [ an address to a legislature ] ; oration suggests an eloquent, rhetorical, sometimes merely bombastic speech, esp. one delivered on some special occasion [ political orations] ; a lecture is a carefully prepared speech intended to inform or instruct the audience [ a lecture to a college class ] ; talk suggests informality and is applied either to an impromptu speech or to an address or lecture in which the speaker deliberately uses a simple, conversational approach; a sermon is a speech by a clergyman intended to give religious or moral instruction and usually based on Scriptural text

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) n.

1. speaking communication, verbalization, vocalization, talk, expression, articulation, utterance, pronunciation, elocution, conversation. ''The index and mirror of the soul.''—Thomas Robertson. ''Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.''—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

2. language vocabulary, dialect, idiom, tongue, vernacular, parlance, lingo, patois.

3.lecture talk, address, oration, discourse, keynote, sermon, salutation, dissertation, recitation, soliloquy, stem-winder, filibuster, tirade.

WORD FIND

• aptness in expression: felicity

• art of word usage: rhetoric, oratory

• ecstatic: rhapsody

• figure of: metaphor, simile, litotes, trope

• fluency, expressiveness: eloquence

• graduation: valedictory

• impairment: dysphasia, speech impediment, dysphonia

• incoherent: gibberish, glossolalia

• incongruous figure of speech: oxymoron

• individual dialect: idiolect

• individual dialect quirk: idiologism

• informal, conversational: colloquial

• insertion of words like ‘‘um,’’ ‘‘like,’’ ‘‘you know,’’ etc.: embolalia

• long and tiresome: screed

• loss for words, be at a: aporia

• loss of: aphasia, muteness

• lying, artful: mendaciloquence

• modulation, change in tone: inflection

• obscuring: obfuscation

• pompous: bombast, fustian

• pronounce clearly: enunciate

• pronunciation, poor or improper: cacology

• recall word, inability to: lethologica

• showing off one’s education through: pedantry

• slip of the tongue: lapsus linguae, Freudian slip

• speaking easily, fluently: voluble

• Ssss or Shh sound in: sibilance

• style of: elocution, locution

• understatement for ironic effect: meiosis

• unexpressive: inarticulate

• word and sentence construction: syntax

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. The faculty, act, or product of speaking: discourse, talk, utterance, verbalization, vocalization. See WORDS. 2. Spoken exchange: chat, colloquy, confabulation, conversation, converse1, dialogue, discourse, talk. Informal: confab. Slang: jaw. See WORDS. 3. A usually formal oral communication to an audience: address, allocution, declamation, lecture, oration, prelection, talk. See WORDS. 4. A system of terms used by a people sharing a history and culture: dialect, language, tongue, vernacular. Linguistics: langue. See WORDS.