Oral & Verbal

Oral (pronounce awr-uhl or ohr-uhl)

(1) Uttered by the mouth; spoken.

(2) Of, using, or transmitted by speech.

(3) Of, relating to, or involving the mouth.

(4) Done, taken, or administered through the mouth.

(5) In phonetics, articulated with none of the voice issuing through the nose, as the normal English vowels and the consonants b and v.

(6) In psychoanalysis, of or relating to the earliest phase of infantile psychosexual development, lasting from birth to one year of age or longer, during which pleasure is obtained from eating, sucking, and biting.

(7) In psychology, of or relating to the sublimation of feelings experienced during the oral stage of childhood.

(8) In zoology, pertaining to that surface of polyps and marine animals that contains the mouth and tentacles.

1620–1625: From the Late Latin oralis, from ōr, the stem of ōs (genitive oris) (mouth, opening, face, entrance), from the primitive Indo-European root os & ous (mouth) and cognate with the Sanskrit āsya, asan & asyam (mouth, opening), the Avestan ah, the Hittite aish, the Old Norse oss (mouth of a river) and the Old English or (beginning, origin, front).  The meaning in psychology is from 1910, the sexual sense first recorded by US professor of zoology Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) in his two seminal reports on human sexuality, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) & Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) (usually referred to as "the Kinsey Reports") although, few doubt the actual acts had been practiced for sometime prior.  The noun use is attested from 1876.  Oral is a noun & adjective, oralize is a verb, oralization is a noun & orally is an adverb; the noun plural is orals.

Verbal (pronounced vur-buhl)

(1) Of or relating to words.

(2) Consisting of or in the form of words.

(3) Consisting of or expressed in words (as opposed to actions).

(4) As a technical use in linguistics, of, relating to a word, particularly a noun or adjective, derived from a verb.  Alternative form is verbid.

(5) In formal grammar, used in a sentence as or like a verb, as participles and infinitives.

(6) In the plural, modern slang term of abuse or invective.

(7) A slang term for a criminal's (real or faked) admission of guilt on arrest or under interrogation (the idea of “putting words in the mouth”).

1483: From the Middle English verbal, from the Old French verbal, from the Latin verbālis (belonging to a word; consisting of words) the construct being verb(um) (word) + ālis (the Latin suffix which, when added to a noun or numeral, forms an adjective of relationship with that noun or numeral).  The phrase verbal conditioning dates from 1954 and the colloquial "verbal diarrhea" (needlessly or excessively loquacious) was noted as early as 1823 and then in relation to speech which hints at the long tradition of the word being used in places pedants would have insisted on "oral".  Verbal is a noun, verb & adjective, verballed is a verb, verballing & verbilization are nouns, verbalize is a verb and verbally is an adverb; the noun plural is verbals.

Oral or Verbal?

Lindsay Lohan, Speak (Casablanca Records, 2004).  Usually, whether text is oral or verbal hangs on whether it was spoken.

The classical distinction is that verbal applies to anything put into words, whether written or spoken, while oral pertains to the mouth, like medications taken by mouth and things spoken; the homophone “aural” is related to the sense of hearing.  Whether or not because of oral’s prurient associations, it’s one of those rules modern grammar Nazis like to try to enforce but verbal and oral have become so inextricably conflated that the tautological phrase “verbal and written” has become entrenched and verbal has enjoyed the meaning “spoken” since the late sixteenth century.  There’s a contested attestation of verbal meaning “composed of words” from 1530 but the first confirmed use meaning “conveyed by speech” is “verbale sermons” in 1589 and it was common by 1617 when a description of advocates before a court was phrased “… the Chamber of the Pallace where verball appeales are decided”.

Something like phone sex can be helpfully illustrative.  The provider in speaking is selling a service delivered orally but it's not "oral sex" because that depends on physical contact and phone sex is too remote; even if oral sex comes up un conversation, over the phone it's still not and is just an emulation delivered orally.  Of course, provider & customer can make arrangements to meet and enjoy oral sex in its accepted sense and that would be a contact, entered into by both parties on the basis of oral statements and it’s probably only in law the distinction between oral a verbal remains important.  In contract law, a contract is often verbal, indeed is frequently reduced to writing but contracts can be created in other ways, either by conduct alone or by oral statements, both of which can be enough in the absence of anything in writing.  A plaintiff issuing a writ alleging a verbal contract exists can expect to be asked to produce the appropriately executed document; if they meant there was just a discussion between the parties, they should avoid any ambiguity by claiming the existence of an oral contract.  This is often done when offering evidence to argue the conduct of a party being such that a contract by acquiescence has been created.