direct speech

British  

noun

1. the reporting of what someone has said or written by quoting his exact words

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Example Sentences

Broadcaster Eamonn Holmes said: "He made direct speech entertaining. With that he was ahead of his time. I'm just sorry he hasn't had more time."

From BBC • Aug. 4, 2025

This remained true even when participants were told to direct their attention toward a silent film and ignore the story, suggesting that top-down attention isn't required to mentally separate direct speech and its echo.

From Science Daily • Feb. 15, 2024

Smith, poet laureate of the United States and a Pulitzer Prize winner, shows tremendous range in these rich, humane poems as she shifts from lyricism to direct speech, from meditative passages to wry humor.

From Washington Post • Apr. 26, 2018

And in The New Yorker, Kenneth Goldsmith referred to its participants as having “produced a body of distinctive literature marked by direct speech, expressions of aching desire, and wide-eyed sincerity.”

From Salon • Oct. 6, 2014

So clearly was this understood that direct speech between them, on its rare occasions, was always ascribed by distant hearers to an outbreak of hostilities.

From Somehow Good by De Morgan, William Frend