can you give me sample of oration?

Answer 1

The Lincoln-Douglas presidential debates. An example of good, old-fashioned oration.

Answer 2

Sample Oration

Answer 3

Any speech given in a formal manner. "Four score and seven years ago..." (Gettysburg Address).

Answer 4

It is recorded in English since c.1374, meaning "one who pleads or argues for a cause," from Anglo-French oratour, from Old French orateur (14c.), from Latin orator "speaker," from orare "speak before a court or assembly, plead," from a Proto-IndoEuropean base *or- "to pronounce a ritual formula". The modern meaning "public speaker" is attested from c.1430.

The derived word oration, originally used for prayer since c.1375, now means (recorded since 1502) any formal speech, as on a ceremonial occasion or delivered in similar high-flown or pompous manner. Also another word for oratist.

Its etymological doublet orison is recorded since c.1175, from Anglo-French oreison, Old French oraison "oration" (12c.), from Latin oratio "speech, oration," notably in Church Latin "prayer, appeal to God," from orare as above, but retained its devotional specialisation.

One meaning of the word oratory is abstract: the art of public speaking.

There is also the equivalent word "Rhetor" of Greek origin, hence the abstract noun rhetoric.


In ancient Rome, the art of speaking in public (Ars Oratoria) was a professional competence especially cultivated by politicians and lawyers. As the Greeks were still seen as the masters in this field, as in philosophy and most sciences, the leading Roman families often either sent their sons to study these things under a famous master in Greece (as was the case with the young Julius Caesar) or engaged a Greek teacher (under pay or as a slave).

It later was developed into rhetoric.

In the 18th century, 'Orator' John Henley was famous for his eccentric sermons.

In the 19th century, orators and lecturers, such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Col. Robert G. Ingersoll were major providers of popular entertainment.

Adolf Hitler is widely regarded by historians as a master orator; his speeches would begin very slowly and gradually build up to an almost ecstatic and frenzied climax that would drive the massive audiences absolutely berserk. One can witness first hand the hypnotic and mesmerizing power of Hitler's speeches by watching the famous Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will which was released in 1934, one year after Hitler ascended to power and established Nazi Germany.


In the young revolutionary French republic, Orateur (French for Orator, but compare the Anglosaxon parliamentary speaker) was the term for the delegated members of the Tribunat to the Corps législatif to motivate their ruling on a presented bill.

In some universities the title 'Orator' is given to the official whose task it is to give speeches on ceremonial occasions, such as the presentation of honorary degrees.

Grand Orator is a high rank in the Grand Lodges of Freemasonry in certain US states (including Alabama, Arizona, ,California (where 'The Grand Orator shall deliver an address at each Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge upon matters appertaining to the Craft and deliver such other addresses as the Grand Master may request.' - California Masonic Code #3050), Missouri, North Carolina)


This term denotes Christian authors, often clergymen, who are renowned for their ability to write and/or deliver (from the pulpit in church, hence the word) rhetorically skilled religious sermons.

Examples are:

William Lindsay Alexander
Jean-Nicolas Beauregard
Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Marie de Beauvais
Henry Ward Beecher
Henry Whitney Bellows
Jaques Bossuet
Louis Bourdaloue
Charles de Bouvens
Athanase Laurent Charles Coquerel
Thomas Guthrie
Robert Hall
Vincent Houdry
Joseph de Jouvancy
Thomas Ken
Jean-Baptiste-Henri-Dominique Lacordaire
Jean de La Haye
William Jay
Jean-François-Anne Landriot
Hugh Latimer
William Laud
Camille Lefebvre
Jose Agostinho De Macedo
James Martineau
Jacques-Marie-Louis Monsabré
Timoléon Cheminais de Montaigu
David Moriarty
Gian Paolo Oliva
Péter Pázmány
Berthold of Ratisbon
Father Abram J. Ryan
Girolamo Savonarola
Georg Scherer
Robert South
Valentin Thalhofer
Gioacchino Ventura di Raulica
Antonio Vieira
Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl
Johann Geiler von Kayserberg
Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner

Ancient and medieval orators
Perikles, Athenian statesman
the ten Attic orators (Greece)
Demosthenes (champion of the philippica), best-known
Aeschines
Andocides
Antiphon (person)
Dinarchus
Hypereides
Lysias
Isaeus
Isocrates
Lycurgus of Athens
Aristogeiton (two orators)
Claudius Aelianus meliglossos 'honey-tongued'
Decimus Magnus Ausonius
Cicero (last great defender of the 'true' Roman Republic)
Domitius Afer
Eumenius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Hegesippus (orator), Athenian
Hermagoras of Temnos, Rhodian school
Cato the Elder (Roman Republic- calling for the final Punic war)
Licinius Macer Calvus Roman republican poet and orator
Marcus Licinius Crassus (Roman)
Nazarius
Paul of Tarsos, thirteenth Apostle
Peter the Hermit, calling for the First Crusade
Quintus Hortensius
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
Seneca the Rhetorician, father of Nero's better-known teacher

Modern orators
Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov)
Abd-el-Kader (Algerian Kabylian leader against French colonial conquest)
Samuel Akintola A Nigerian statesman assassinated in 1966
William Jennings Bryan
Fidel Castro (Cuban Marxist revolutionary leader > President)
Winston Churchill (WWII British PM)
Henry Clay
John C. Calhoun
Bill Clinton (US President)
Charles De Gaulle ('Free French' general; President)
Frederick Douglass
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edward Everett
George Galloway
Joseph Goebbels
John Henley
Patrick Henry
Adolf Hitler (Austrian Führer of Nazi Third Reich)
Robert G. Ingersoll
John F.Kennedy (US President)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Abraham Lincoln (US President)
Douglas MacArthur
Benito Mussolini (Duce of Fascist Italy)
Nasser, Egyptian president and leader of Arab nationalism
Richard M. Nixon
James Orbinski
Patrick Pearse (Irish Republican leader)
Ronald Reagan (US President)
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Daniel Webster
Malcolm X
Hassan Nasrallah
William Lloyd Garrison