the.com/speeches

the verbal acts where one person makes silence pay rent for hours

means The plural of speech — formal spoken addresses delivered to an audience, often at occasions like weddings, ceremonies, or political events.

from From Old English 'sprǣc' or 'spǣc,' meaning talk, speaking, or discourse, tied to the verb 'sprecan,' to speak. The 'r' once nested in the middle (you can still hear its ghost in German 'Sprache') but English wore it away over the centuries, leaving the smoother 'speech' we use today.

fear factor
public speaking outranks death in common phobia surveys
shortest ever
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address ran about two minutes
longest filibuster
Strom Thurmond spoke 24 hours 18 minutes nonstop
ancient training
Greeks taught rhetoric as a core civic skill
famous ad-lib
MLK's 'I Have a Dream' was partly improvised
for instance

gettysburg address — abraham lincoln, 272 words, november 19 1863, pennsylvania

i have a dream — martin luther king jr, august 28 1963, washington dc march

live long and prosper — ronald reagan, january 28 1986, challenger space shuttle disaster

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