speech
/spiːtʃ
/- I'd long since lost the ability to understand human speech.
- Their research could have implications for discovering how the developing brain processes sound and speech.
- One of the most compelling is the marked improvement of our ability to understand speech if we can observe the speaker's lips moving.
Synonyms
- Each has an idiosyncratic style of dress and speech.
- She had an excellent ear for accents and individual styles of speech, but otherwise did not alter her voice drastically.
- His soothing, mannered style of speech and genuine affection for his film kept my attention throughout the duration of the commentary.
Synonyms
- The manner in which he conducted branch meetings or indeed his professionalism in his delivery of addresses and speeches at formal functions would be sadly missed.
- Formal speeches were delivered at the main gate but were drowned out by a low flying army helicopter.
- At 81, he can get the full attention of an audience while delivering a speech or singing a song..
Synonyms
- Other cassettes sport Agatha Christie tales and one cassette in particular is all about the great speeches by famous characters in various Shakespearean plays.
- And then in the middle of my long speech I forgot my lines.
Origin
Old English sprǣc, sprēc, later spēc, of West Germanic origin: related to Dutch spraak, German Sprache, also to speak.
speak from Old English:
The close relationship between speak and speech is clearer in the original Old English, where they are sprecan and sprēc, the ‘r’ dropping out of the words early on. ‘I speak as I find’, first appears in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew: ‘Mistake me not; I speak but as I find.’ Never speak ill of the dead has an even longer history. ‘Speak no evil of the dead’ is attributed to the Spartan magistrate Chilon as far back as the 6th century bc, and a later Latin proverb, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, can be translated as ‘say nothing of the dead but what is good’. The English version of the proverb is first recorded in the 16th century, originally in the form ‘rail not upon him that is dead’. Speakeasy (late 19th century) an American term for an unlicensed drinking establishment, gets its name for ‘speak’ and ‘easy’ in the sense ‘gently, softly’ from the need to be discreet when talking about it. See also ache