Word.ws English Dictionary

speaking of

speaking of is the present participle and gerund of speak of.

Meaning of speak of

Verb

speak of (third-person singular simple present speaks of, present participle speaking of, simple past spoke of, past participle spoken of)

  1. (phrasal, transitive, verb) To bespeak; show; indicate; foretell; suggest; speak to.
    • The place was solitary and deserted […] only the line of mouldering towers and battlements on the hill above spoke of the busy life that had long passed away.1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 1, page 7

Adverb

speaking of

  1. (colloquial) Speaking of which; relatedly, used to introduce a related topic.
    • “Speaking of by the way: nice car. I mean that.”2006, Mark Winegardner, The Godfather’s Revenge, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, →ISBN, page 76
    • No more songs. This is a restaurant, for Christ’s sake, and speaking of, can somebody tell me where the hell is that veal?2009, Wells Tower, “Executors of Important Energies” (short story), in Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Macmillan, page 83

Interjection

  1. Synonym of speak of the devil.
    • A: I wish Maria had come. B: Speaking of! Here she is!

Synonyms of speaking of

Questions about speaking of

What does speaking of mean?
Speaking of means speaking of which; relatedly, used to introduce a related topic.
What is speaking of the present participle and gerund of?
Speaking of is the present participle and gerund of speak of.
What part of speech is speaking of?
Speaking of can be an adverb or an interjection.

Words near speaking of in the dictionary

  1. speaking in terms
  2. speaking in tongues
  3. speaking like a book
  4. speaking objection
  5. speaking objections
  6. speaking of
  7. speaking one's conscience
  8. speaking one's mind
  9. speaking out
  10. speaking someone's language
  11. speaking terms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: speaking of (page history and authors); speak of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “speaking of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/speaking_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.