interior monologue

American  

noun

1. Literature. a form of stream-of-consciousness writing that represents the inner thoughts of a character.

2. Movies, Television. the device of showing a character on screen who does not appear to speak, although the character's voice is heard on the soundtrack to create the illusion that the audience is hearing the character's thoughts.

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interior monologue British  

noun

1. a literary attempt to present the mental processes of a character before they are formed into regular patterns of speech or logical sequence See also stream of consciousness

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Etymology

Origin of interior monologue

First recorded in 1920–25

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

interior monologue

“I guess my interior monologue is highly interpretable to people, and if you’re standing in a store and you see somebody really thinking and thinking, they’re like, ‘She must be restocking the shelves.’

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026

Quickly editing my interior monologue, as to not admit psychosis: “That’s my dog.”

From Salon ● Jun. 25, 2026

Peppered with amusing person-on-the-street commentary, set off in their own smaller frames, this is a woman's interior monologue brought to life as both candid semi-autobiographical memoir and cinematic fantasia.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 5, 2020

Baldwin closes the book by imagining the interior monologue of the white American who has been raised on the false history of the Lost Cause.

From New York Times ● Aug. 23, 2020

The two friends conjectured his mental labor from his concentrated look, and the low exclamations which were escaping him like the echoes of an interior monologue.

From The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Charlotte Brewster Jordan

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