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

There was in him something of John Bright's sturdy manhood, direct speech and devotion to human rights; something, too, of Franklin's homely shrewdness,—though little of Franklin's large philosophy or serenity.

From The Negro and the Nation A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement by Merriam, George Spring