soliloquy
Other forms: soliloquies
Ever see someone talking while alone on a stage? That's what you call a soliloquy — a speech made by a character in a drama as if that character is voicing their own private thoughts. Shakespeare's plays are full of soliloquies.
The noun soliloquy comes from the Latin roots solus ("alone") plus loqui ("speak") — so the word literally means "an act of speaking to oneself." A soliloquy is a dramatic speech that reveals a character's inner thoughts and reflections. Some of the most famous lines in drama are taken from soliloquies. Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" speech is a soliloquy, for example.
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speech you make to yourselfsynonyms: monologuetype of:language, oral communication, speech, speech communication, spoken communication, spoken language, voice communication(language) communication by word of mouth
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a (usually long) dramatic speech intended to give the illusion of unspoken reflections
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Vocabulary lists containing soliloquy
Words selected by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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