Subscriber login


Forgot your password?

Library card login

Other

oral

Syllabification: (o·ral)
Pronunciation: /ˈôrəl/
Translate oral | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of oral

adjective

  • 1by word of mouth; spoken rather than written:they had reached an oral agreement
  • relating to the transmission of information or literature by word of mouth rather than in writing:oral literature
  • (of a society) not having reached the stage of literacy.
  • 2of or relating to the mouth:oral hygiene
  • done or taken by the mouth:oral contraceptives
  • Phonetics (of a speech sound) pronounced by the voice resonating in the mouth, as the vowels in English. Compare with nasal (sense 2 of the adjective).
  • Psychoanalysis (in Freudian theory) relating to or denoting a stage of infantile psychosexual development in which the mouth is the main source of pleasure and the center of experience.

noun

(often orals)
  • a spoken examination or test:he was preparing for his orals a French oral

Derivatives

orally

adverb

Origin:

early 17th century: from late Latin oralis, from Latin os, or- 'mouth'

oral in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of oral in the British & World English dictionary
  |  Cite

Word of the day

enjambement

/ ɪnˈdʒam(b)m(ə)nt /
noun
(in verse) the continuation of a sentence without a pause …