Synonym Study

• A sermon is a speech by a clergyman intended to give religious or moral instruction and usually based on Scriptural text
• Talk suggests informality and is applied either to an impromptu speech or to an address or lecture in which the speaker deliberately uses a simple, conversational approach
• A lecture is a carefully prepared speech intended to inform or instruct the audience a lecture to a college class
• Oration suggests an eloquent, rhetorical, sometimes merely bombastic speech, esp. one delivered on some special occasion political orations
• Address implies a formal, carefully prepared speech and usually attributes importance to the speaker or the speech an address to a legislature
• Speech is the general word for a discourse delivered to an audience, whether prepared or impromptu