Definition of "soliloquy"

soliloquy

/səˈlɪləkwi/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural soliloquies
1. (drama) The act of a character speaking to themselves so as to reveal their thoughts to the audience.
  Quotations
  Yet if I were to say […] that Hamlet's soliloquy had been much over-rated, it would not be said, on this account, that I was unable to appreciate Shakespeare.
  1901, Edmund Selous, Bird Watching, J.M. Dent & Co, London, Chapter XII: Watching Blackbirds, Nightingales, Sand-martins, etc., page 315
2. (authorship) A speech or written discourse in this form.
  Quotations
  The feeling of Singleton's bosom grew heightened in its tone of melancholy, and a more passionate emphasis of thought broke forth in his half-muttered soliloquy:— ¶"How I remember as I look […]
  1835, William Gilmore Simms, The Partisan, Harper, Chapter XI, page 135
  Here is a very over-simplified example, this time expressed in the form of a subjective soliloquy rather than a computer simulation.
  1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Kindle edition, OUP Oxford, published 2016, page 126
verb
third-person singular simple present soliloquies, present participle soliloquying or soliloquing, simple past and past participle soliloquied
1. (very rare) To issue a soliloquy.