to deliver a speech
- phrasal verb
- /dɪˈlɪvər ə spiːtʃ/
- Formal
- Jim is watching the TV news: Martin Luther King is delivering a speech against the Vietnam War.
- the president delivered a speech
- Trump delivered a speech
- Obama delivered a speech
Examples
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On April 13, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was scheduled to deliver a speech celebrating Jefferson Day.
Blog text (20) -
Now he is in Seattle delivering a speech.
Fiction book (1999) -
Eugene Kinckle Jones, an executive officer of the National Urban League, delivered a speech before the National Conference of Social Work.
Academic text (1994) -
In January 1992, Mayor Dinkins visited Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn to deliver a speech.
Academic text (1998) -
Perhaps the hardest task fell to Ann Romney, who had to deliver a speech that humanized her husband.
Blog text (27) -
Members of the audience applaud as U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivers a speech in Jerusalem.
Blog text (4) -
In 1997, Tung Chee-Hwa, chief executive of Hong Kong, delivered a speech outlining his vision for the future of Chinese Hong Kong.
Academic text (1999) -
President Obama will deliver a speech about climate change at the conference next week.
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The governor plans to deliver a speech to address the new healthcare policies during the town hall meeting.
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At the graduation ceremony, the guest speaker will deliver a speech inspiring the students to pursue their dreams.
Synonyms
To perform for other people, for example a speech
To give a formal talk to a group of people
To give a speech, idea, or message to a group of people
Give a formal talk to people at a public or special event
To talk in front of a group of people
To give a long formal speech that sounds boring and self-important
To end a formal speech with a long, strong summary
Antonyms
How Formal
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to give a formal talk' is directly and compositionally derived from 'deliver' (to present or perform ideas to an audience) and 'speech' (a planned oral address); the indefinite article 'a' does not change this compositional relation. This verb + noun collocation follows common cross-linguistic patterns, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily understand the MWE.
Etymology
Deliver a speech comes from the idea of deliver meaning to 'bring' or 'hand over' and speech meaning a spoken message. Imagine a speaker bringing their words to the audience, so to deliver a speech means 'to give' a formal talk.