speak

Meaning

Verb

1. To communicate with one's voice, to say words out loud.
2. To have a conversation.
3. To communicate or converse by some means other than orally, such as writing or facial expressions.
4. To deliver a message to a group; to deliver a speech.
5. To be able to communicate in a language.
6. To be able to communicate in a language.
7. To utter.
8. To communicate (some fact or feeling); to bespeak, to indicate.
9. (informal) To understand (as though it were a language).
10. To produce a sound; to sound.
11. Of a bird, to be able to vocally reproduce words or phrases from a human language.
12. To address; to accost; to speak to.

Noun

1. language, jargon, or terminology used uniquely in a particular environment or group.
2. Speech, conversation.
3. (informal) Short for speaker point.

Noun

a low class bar, a speakeasy.

Pronounced as (IPA)

/spiːk/

Etymology

From Middle English speken (“to speak”), from Old English specan (“to speak”). This is usually taken to be an irregular alteration of earlier sprecan (“to speak”), from Proto-West Germanic *sprekan, from Proto-Germanic *sprekaną (“to speak, make a sound”), from Proto-Indo-European *spreg- (“to make a sound, utter, speak”). Finding this proposed loss of r from the stable cluster spr unparalleled, Hill instead sets up a different root, Proto-West Germanic *spekan (“to negotiate”) from Proto-Indo-European *bʰégʾ-e- (“to distribute”) with *s-mobile, which collapsed in meaning with *sprekan ("to speak" < "to crackle, prattle") and so came to be seen as a free variant thereof.
Cognates:
Cognate with West Frisian sprekke, Low German spreken (“to speak”), Dutch spreken (“to speak”), German sprechen (“to speak”), and also with Albanian shpreh (“to utter, voice, express”) through Indo-European.

Sentences

In another , the female subject could speak Bengali with a poor pronunciation .

Colotenango is traditionally a Maya community whose residents speak the Mayan Mam language .