Speeches

How to spell speeches

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce speeches

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does speeches mean?

1. nounMore than one formal spoken address delivered to an audience.

Speeches in a sentence

• The wedding speeches ran longer than anyone expected.

• Both candidates rehearsed their speeches before the debate.

Where does speeches come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of 'speech', which descends from the Old English noun 'sprǣc', later 'spǣc', meaning 'the act of speaking, talk, or language'. It belongs to the same Germanic family as the verb 'sprecan', 'to speak', and is a close relative of the modern German 'Sprache', 'language', and 'sprechen', 'to speak'. Over the centuries the original 'r' in 'sprǣc' was lost in everyday English speech, leaving the smoother 'speech' we use today. The plural follows the regular English pattern in which words ending in '-ch' take '-es' rather than a bare '-s', which is exactly the spelling trap here: the 'e' before the 's' is easy to drop. The word has carried its core sense of formal or public talking from Anglo-Saxon times right through to the present day.

How the word is built

• speech (from Old English sprǣc/spǣc: speaking, talk)
• -es (plural suffix)