Definition of "public speaking" []

• The act, art, or process of making effective speeches before an audience. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "As Blaine Hammond learned in the El Paso flight operations office, the most dreaded form of public speaking was a TV interview."
• "As an aid to public speaking I was taught to "elocute," and I remember in every mournful detail the occasion on which I gave my first recitation."
• "The nervous flutter of May Lecturing has subsided into stagnancy; into the feeling that, of all things in the world, public speaking is the hatefulest for me; that I ought devoutly to thank Heaven there is no absolute compulsion laid on me at present to speak!"