Why this word is great
PLAIDOYER — [Noun] A formal plea or act of pleading, especially a lawyer's climactic speech in defense of a client or a passionate, structured argument in favor of a cause. Borrowed from French plaidoyer, from Old French plaidier ("to plead"), ultimately from Latin placitum ("decree, opinion"), from placere ("to please"). Unlike a “plea,” which can be a private, naked supplication, or “advocacy,” which names the entire campaign, a plaidoyer is the singular, crafted performance of that campaign’s central theme. It is the barrister’s final summation to a silent jury, the reformer’s meticulously footnoted manifesto, the toast at a fundraiser that unlocks the donors’ hearts—a temporary monument of rhetoric erected against the tide of indifference, carrying the fragile hope that words, arranged just so, might temporarily stay the tide.