noun

• (chiefly US, law) The question put to a convicted defendant by a judge after the rendering of the verdict in a trial, in which the defendant is asked whether he or she wishes to make a statement to the court before sentencing; the statement made by a defendant in response to such a question; the legal right of a defendant to make such a statement.
  "The term "allocution" refers to the personal right of a defendant to make a statement on his own behalf in an attempt to affect sentencing. . . . The word "allocution" is also frequently used . . . to describe the statement made by a defendant during a guilty plea proceeding."
• (chiefly US, law) The legal right of a victim, in some jurisdictions, to make a statement to a court prior to sentencing of a defendant convicted of a crime causing injury to that victim; the actual statement made to a court by a victim.
  "As of July, 1985, 19 states permitted victim allocution at the sentencing phase of criminal trials."
• (Roman Catholicism) A pronouncement by a pope to an assembly of church officials concerning a matter of church policy.
  "The recent papal allocution To the International Congress on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas has been the occasion for much discussion concerning the use of artificial feeding tubes for nutrition and hydration."
• (communication, media) The mode of information dissemination in which media broadcasts are transmitted to multiple receivers with no or very limited capability of a two-way exchange of information.
  "Allocution is the dissemination of information by a central unit towards a collectivity of decentral units, the central unit being both the source and the determining actor."