1. by word of mouth; spoken rather than written: "they had reached an oral agreement"
▪ relating to the transmission of information or literature by word of mouth rather than in writing: "oral literature"
▪ (of a society) not having reached the stage of literacy.
2. relating to the mouth: "oral hygiene"
▪ done or taken by the mouth: "oral contraceptives"
▪ (of a speech sound) pronounced by the voice resonating in the mouth, as the vowels in English.
▪ (in Freudian theory) relating to or denoting a stage of infantile psychosexual development in which the mouth is the main source of pleasure and the center of experience.
noun
1. a spoken examination or test:"a French oral"
Word Originearly 17th century: from late Latin oralis, from Latin os, or- ‘mouth’.
