Definition of allocution in English English dictionary
- A formal speech, especially one which is regarded as authoritative and forceful
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.
- A pronouncement by a pope to an assembly of church officials concerning a matter of church policy
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 concering the use of artificial feeding tubes for nutrition and hydration.
- 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
As of July, 1985, 19 states permitted victim allocution at the sentencing phase of criminal trials.
- 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
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.
- {n} a speech to another, an address
- (rhetoric) a formal or authoritative address that advises or exhorts
- The act or manner of speaking to, or of addressing in words
- {i} official speech
- An address; a hortatory or authoritative address as of a pope to his clergy