the act of speaking alone or to oneself, esp as a theatrical device
2.
a speech in a play that is spoken in soliloquy
Hamlet's first soliloquy
▶ USAGE Soliloquy is sometimes wrongly used where monologue is meant. Both words refer to a long speech by one person, but a monologue can be addressed to other people, whereas in a soliloquy the speaker is always talking to himself or herself
Word origin
C17: via Late Latin sōliloquium, from Latin sōlus sole + loquī to speak
Examples of 'soliloquies' in a sentence
soliloquies
They revel in the face-to-face intensity, pauses, silences and soliloquies.
Times, Sunday Times (2010)
There won't be people speaking soliloquies into mobile phones.
Times, Sunday Times (2017)
Studenty, even grungy, he often delivers speeches and soliloquies with a cigarette in hand.
The Times Literary Supplement (2010)
Hamlet, with its brooding soliloquies and existential angst, was painfully near the knuckle.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
The soliloquies are movingly and passionately delivered, crystal clear in their meaning.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
He is quite at ease with the great soliloquies, though.
Times, Sunday Times (2009)
Actors interrupt conversations with sudden turns of the head towards us and snappy mini-soliloquies.
Times, Sunday Times (2013)
But he travels through the great soliloquies with intelligence and emotional truth.
Times, Sunday Times (2010)
The thrillingly malign soliloquies are rapped out with sharp articulacy, crisp, controlled and highly organised.
Times, Sunday Times (2007)
With a kingdom crumbling, plotters plotting, fates conspiring, and his soliloquies ever more agonised, he's doing tragedy right now.