Eloquence

Eloquence (from French ''eloquence'' from Latin ''eloquentia'') is fluent, elegant, persuasive, and forceful speech, persuading an audience. Eloquence is both a natural talent and improved by knowledge of language, study of a specific subject to be addressed, philosophy, rationale and ability to form a persuasive set of tenets within a presentation.

"True eloquence," Oliver Goldsmith says, "Does not consist ... in saying great things in a sublime style, but in a simple style; for there is, properly speaking, no such thing as a sublime style, the sublimity lies only in the things; and when they are not so, the language may be turgid, affected, metaphorical, but not affecting."

Eloquence in antiquity

The word eloquence itself derives from the Latin roots: ''ē'' (a shortened form of the preposition ''ex''), meaning "out (of)", and ''loqui'', a deponent verb meaning "to speak". Thus, eloquence is to speak fluently and understand and master language so as to employ a graceful style with persuasiveness, or gracefulness in interpretation and communication.

The concept of eloquence could date back to the Rhetoric of the ancient Greeks, Calliope (one of the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne) being the Muse of epic poetry and eloquence. Hermes, the Greek God, was a patron of eloquence. Cicero, a rhetorician and prolific author, was well-regarded in Ancient Rome as an orator of excellent eloquence.

Renaissance eloquence

The Renaissance humanists focused on the correlation of speech and po