declamation
/dɛkləˈmeɪʃ(ə)n
/noun [mass noun]
1The action or art of declaiming: Shakespearean declamation [count noun]: declamations of patriotism...
- By now, a type of free-style declamation known as ‘recitative’ (literally ‘speech-song’) was being used to hurtle the drama forward.
- Motivation - particularly of the antagonist, Von Doom - was likewise absent, or, where it was articulated, it was in an irritating expository declamation by one of the primary characters on behalf of another.
- This remained the case through to William Beveridge, whose declamation of the five evils of ‘Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness’ would be almost unthinkable now.
1.1 [count noun] A rhetorical exercise or set speech: lines written for a school declamation...
- His Speech Day declamations, which took place on 5 July 1804, 6 June 1805, and 4 July 1805, played an important role in his self-fashioning.
Synonyms
speech, address, lecture, sermon, homily, discourse, delivery, oration, recitation, disquisition, monologue;
harangue, tirade, diatribe, broadside, rant
informal spiel
North American informal stump speech
rare peroration, allocution, predication
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'a set speech'): from Latin declamatio(n-), from the verb declamare (see declaim).