Rhetoric is one of the arts of using language as a means to entertain or persuade. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public speakers and writers to move audiences to action with arguments.

The very act of defining has itself been a central part of rhetoric, appearing among Aristotle's Topics. The word is derived from the Greek ῥητορικός (rhētorikós), "oratorical", from ῥήτωρ (rhḗtōr), "public speaker", related to ῥημα (rhêma), "that which is said or spoken, word, saying", and ultimately derived from the verb ἐρῶ (erô), "to speak, say". In its broadest sense, rhetoric concerns human discourse.

Throughout European history, rhetoric has concerned itself with persuasion in public and political settings such as assemblies and courts. Because of its associations with democratic institutions, rhetoric is commonly said to flourish in open and democratic societies with rights of free speech, free assembly, and political enfranchisement for some portion of the population. As a course of study, rhetoric trains students to speak and/or write effectively.

The rhetorical curriculum is nearly as old as the rhetorical tradition itself. Over its many centuries, the curriculum has been transformed in a number of ways, but, in general, it has emphasized the study of principles and rules of composition as a means for moving audiences. In Greece, rhetoric originated in a school of pre-Socratic philosophers known as Sophists circa 600 BC.

It was later taught in the Roman Empire and during the Middle Ages as one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (along with logic and grammar).

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