ORATORY

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does oratory mean? 

• ORATORY (noun)
  The noun ORATORY has 1 sense:

1. addressing an audience formally (usually a long and rhetorical address and often pompous)

  Familiarity information: ORATORY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ORATORY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Addressing an audience formally (usually a long and rhetorical address and often pompous)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Context example:

he loved the sound of his own oratory

Hypernyms ("oratory" is a kind of...):

address; speech (the act of delivering a formal spoken communication to an audience)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "oratory"):

keynote address; keynote speech (a speech setting forth the keynote)

nominating address; nominating speech; nomination (an address (usually at a political convention) proposing the name of a candidate to run for election)

oration (an instance of oratory)

declamation (vehement oratory)

epideictic oratory (a type of oratory used to eulogize or condemn a person or group of people)

stump speech (political oratory)

salutatory; salutatory address; salutatory oration (an opening or welcoming statement (especially one delivered at graduation exercises))

valediction; valedictory; valedictory address; valedictory oration (a farewell oration (especially one delivered during graduation exercises by an outstanding member of a graduating class))

Derivation:

oratorical (characteristic of an orator or oratory)

 Context examples 

They condescended occasionally to poetry or oratory; and Byron, Charles James Fox, Sheridan, and Castlereagh, preserved some reputation amongst them, in spite of their publicity.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)