Wiktionary
n. 1 A platform where candidates in an election give speeches. 2 (context historical English) An assembly, especially one of the retainers of a ruler.
Wikipedia
A husting originally referred to a native Germanic governing assembly, the thing. By metonymy, the term may now refer to any event, such as debates or speeches, during an election campaign where one or more of the representative candidates are present. The term is used synonymously with stump in the United States.
Usage examples of "husting".
In every election after 1958, Diefenbaker found himself pursued across the hustings by a political ghost: himself.
On the hustings his words appeared to spring instinctively from him as he exulted in his dreams for Canada, all the while blazing away against invisible villains who, unlike himself, had little concern for the common man.
Many of his legislative achievements were based on ideas he had been propounding on the hustings for decades.
THE MOVE AGAINST FOREIGN INVESTORS IN THE BABY BUDGET OF 1960: In line with his hustings promises of the 1957 and 1958 campaigns, Diefenbaker spent much Of 1959 and 196o making vaguely chauvinistic statements about the dangers to the Canadian economy of foreign domination.
On the hustings, however, the Prime Minister made quite different claims for his Bill.
Unlike his Liberal predecessors who tried to keep external disputes out of domestic politics, Diefenbaker deliberately injected international issues into his hustings orations.
The political promises that Diefenbaker made during the 1962 campaign were basically different from the usual brand of hustings pledges.
Mario Hustings was a fine-looking man for all his sixty years, well built, bronzed and with a genial smile.
But the most prominent question on the hustings, even in England, was Catholic emancipation.
I can do for them in the future, and all the while Dennis is out there on the hustings slinging mud.
He has never opened his mouth in the House, but to give his vote, and on the hustings he made no figure.
My own idea is, that I should succeed better in the calm argumentative debates in Parliament, than as a hustings orator, or a popular declaimer.
I wondered what figure Stanley would make as a hustings orator, and what impression in his canvass.
But his friends might rely on seeing him at the hustings, and hearing him too, when the proper time arrived.
The Common People became therefore a mystical sympathetic being, essentially a God, whose altar was the hustings and whose oracle the ballot box.