Word.ws English Dictionary

stump speech

stump speech noun: a standard speech by a politician running for office.

stump speech: a standard speech by a politician running for office
Image: George Caleb Bingham, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

stump speech (plural stump speeches)

  1. (US) A standard speech by a politician running for office.
    • A week ago, two or three events a day was the norm for each candidate. They have shortened their stump speeches and are spending less time greeting supporters.2008 November 3, John M. Broder, Julie Bosman, “In States Once Reliably Red, Palin and Biden Tighten Their Stump Speeches”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    • “You're hungry and you want a burrito,” [Jeff] Jarvis exclaimed during one of his frequent stump speeches.2014, Astra Taylor, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN

Forms of stump speech

pluralstump speeches

Origin of stump speech

From a bucolic image of a politician touring little settlements with his boilerplate speech which he delivers standing atop the stump of a chopped-down tree.

Questions about stump speech

What does stump speech mean?
Stump speech means a standard speech by a politician running for office.
What part of speech is stump speech?
Stump speech is a noun.
What is the plural of stump speech?
The plural of stump speech is stump speeches.

Words near stump speech in the dictionary

  1. stump orator
  2. stump orators
  3. stump out
  4. stump powder
  5. stump powders
  6. stump speech
  7. stump speeches
  8. stump stabber
  9. stump stabbers
  10. stump tracery
  11. stump up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stump speech (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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