locute

English

Etymology

Back-formation from locution. The first sense could also be directly derived from Latin locut-, perfect active participial stem of loquor (“talk, speak”).

Verb

locute (third-person singular simple present locutes, present participle locuting, simple past and past participle locuted)

1. (intransitive or transitive, rare) To speak; to say; to utter.
   • 1709, John Oldmixon, The History of Addresses, volume 1, page 240:

     And 'tis strange that Reverend Body shou'd not find out in several Years, that he who cannot Locute will never Prolocute well.

   • 1983, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, “Review: Current Problems in Sociobiology: An Adaptationist Review”, in Evolution‎^[1], volume 37, pages 1325–1326:

     […] and P. Bateson ("Behavioural development and evolutionary processes") pointedly locutes what R. Dawkins ("Replicators and vehicles") only circumlocutes—that he (Dawkins) has wisely changed his language to clarify the fact that the direct action of selection is on phenotypes, not genes.

   • 2014, J. Robert Lennon, “Five Stories”, in Diagram 14.6‎^[2], retrieved 1 May 2023:

     "God's a pervert […] " He locutes with double rows of gold teeth, in the bland guise of an argument.

2. (philosophy, pragmatics, intransitive or transitive with the utterance as object) To utter a meaningful sentence; to perform a locutionary act.
   • 2011, David Braun, “Implicating Questions”, in Mind and Language‎^[3], volume 26, pages 574–595:

     The translator locutes propositions, but illocutes nothing at all.

   • 2020, The Oxford Handbook of Assertion, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 367:

     By contrast, for Grice, one who for instance speaks ironically makes as if to illocute, rather than making as if to locute.

Related terms

• illocute
• perlocute

Latin

Participle

locūte

1. vocative masculine singular of locūtus

References

• locute in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)

Spanish

Verb

locute

1. inflection of locutar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative