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