second-hand speech

1. 1.

   overheard conversation (especially overheard cellphone conversation)

   Broaderconversation

Questions about second-hand speech

What does second-hand speech mean?

second-hand speech means "overheard conversation (especially overheard cellphone conversation)".

Is second-hand speech a common word?

second-hand speech is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.