# allocution
## English
### Etymology

From Latin allocūtiō (“address”).

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /alə(ʊ)ˈkjuːʃən/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)

### Noun

allocution (countable and uncountable, plural allocutions)
* A formal speech, especially one which is regarded as authoritative and forceful.
** 1904, Joseph Conrad, chapter 2, in Nostromo:The Minister of War, in a barrack-square allocution to the officers of the artillery regiment he had been inspecting, had declared the national honour sold to foreigners.
* (chiefly US, law) The question put to a convicted defendant by a judge after the rendering of the verdict in a trial, in which the defendant is asked whether he or she wishes to make a statement to the court before sentencing; the statement made by a defendant in response to such a question; the legal right of a defendant to make such a statement.
** 1997, Caren Myers, “Encouraging Allocution at Capital Sentencing: A Proposal for Use Immunity”, in Columbia Law Review, vol. 97, no. 3, p. 788 n6:The term "allocution" refers to the personal right of a defendant to make a statement on his own behalf in an attempt to affect sentencing. . . . The word "allocution" is also frequently used . . . to describe the statement made by a defendant during a guilty plea proceeding.
* (chiefly US, law) The legal right of a victim, in some jurisdictions, to make a statement to a court prior to sentencing of a defendant convicted of a crime causing injury to that victim; the actual statement made to a court by a victim.
** 1989, Karen L. Kennard, “The Victim's Veto: A Way to Increase Victim Impact on Criminal Case Dispositions”, in California Law Review, vol. 77, no. 2, p. 427 n49:As of July, 1985, 19 states permitted victim allocution at the sentencing phase of criminal trials.
* (Roman Catholicism) A pronouncement by a pope to an assembly of church officials concerning a matter of church policy.
** 2004, Thomas Shannon, James Walter, “Implications of the Papal Allocution on Feeding Tubes,”, in The Hastings Center Report, volume 34, number 4, page 18:The recent papal allocution To the International Congress on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas has been the occasion for much discussion concerning the use of artificial feeding tubes for nutrition and hydration.
* (communication, media) The mode of information dissemination in which media broadcasts are transmitted to multiple receivers with no or very limited capability of a two-way exchange of information.
** 1993, I. Th. M. Snellen and Wim B. H. J. van de Donk (eds.), Public Administration in an Information Age, →ISBN, p. 198 (Google preview):
    Allocution is the dissemination of information by a central unit towards a collectivity of decentral units, the central unit being both the source and the determining actor.
** 2008, Christina Spurgeon, Advertising and New Media, →ISBN, page 5:Bordewijk and van Kaam describe the one-to-many architecture of modern broadcast mass media as ‘allocution’. This is the least responsive type of interactivity because it is not designed to support exchanges. . . . The one-way flow of information is under the programmatic control of the media service provider.

#### Related terms

* allocute

#### Translations
### References

* Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.
* Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary, 1987-1996.

### Anagrams

* loculation

## French
### Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin allocūtiō.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /a.lɔ.ky.sjɔ̃/
* Audio:(file)

### Noun

allocution f (plural allocutions)
* (short) speech
** 2023 August, Ulrike Lune Riboni, “Sans les images ?”, in Le Monde diplomatique, page 28:À ce titre, le président de la République a souligné le 30 juin dernier, dans une allocution depuis la cellule interministérielle de crise, le « rôle considérable » de Snapchat et TikTok dans les soulèvements des quartiers populaires qui on suivi la mort de Nahel Merzouk […](please add an English translation of this quotation)

### Further reading

* “allocution”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.