speechifying

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English

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Verb

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speechifying

  1. present participle and gerund of speechify

Noun

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speechifying (plural speechifyings)

  1. The art of making speeches; rhetoric or oratory.
  2. The act of speaking, especially at excessive length.
    • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VIII, in Romance and Reality. [], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, [], →OCLC, page 174:
      "I thank you," said Lorraine, "for reinforcing my favourite theory, which maintains that a love of talking is the great feature of the present time. Steam is not half so much its characteristic as speechifying."
    • 2007 December 9, Scott Timberg, quoting Annalee Newitz, “The descent of a sci-fi guru”, in Los Angeles Times[1]:
      “To literary readers, the books look cheesy, sexist in a hairy-chest, gold-chain kind of way. His [Robert Heinlein's] stuff hasn’t stood the test of time,” because of characters’ windy speechifying and their frontier optimism.