freedom of speech
/ˈfɹiː.dəm əv ˌspiːt͡ʃ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.55 in modern English
31
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
2
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The right of citizens to speak, or otherwise communicate, without fear of harm or prosecution.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "S. Iohn the Baptiste, who died for the lyke liberty and fredome of speache, as S. Quillian, and S. Lamberte did."
- "That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament."
- "All Miniſters, therefore, who were Oppreſſors, or intended to be Oppreſſors, have been loud in their Complaints againſt Freedom of Speech, and the Licence of the Preſs; and always reſtrained, or endeavored to reſtrain both, in conſequence of this, they have browbeaten Writers, and puniſhed them violently, and againſt Law, and burnt their Works; by all which, they ſhewed how much Truth alarmed them, and how much they were at Enmity with Truth."
- "The freedom of speech and of the press which are secured by the First Amendment against abridgment by the United States are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties which are secured to all persons by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by a state. The safeguarding of these rights to the ends that men may speak as they think on matters vital to them and that falsehoods may be exposed through the processes of education and discussion is essential to free government. Those who won our independence had confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning and communication of ideas to discover and spread political and economic truth. […] Abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press, however, impairs those opportunities for public education that are essential to effective exercise of the power of correcting error through the processes of popular government."
- "First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
- "Cyberspace may give freedom of speech more muscle than the First Amendment does. It may already have become literally impossible for a government to shut people up."
Etymology
The concept and the term are ancient; Athens’ democratic ideology of free speech (παρρησία (parrhēsía)) is thought to have emerged in the 5th or 6th century B.C.E. The first occurrence of the phrase freedom of speech recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1567, and it also appears in the English Bill of Rights, among other works: see the quotations.