speak vs work the room

speak

verb
  • To communicate (some fact or feeling); to bespeak, to indicate. 

  • To communicate with one's voice, to say words out loud. 

  • To understand (as though it were a language). 

  • To have a conversation. 

  • To utter. 

  • To produce a sound; to sound. 

  • To be able to communicate in a language. 

  • Of a bird, to be able to vocally reproduce words or phrases from a human language. 

  • To deliver a message to a group; to deliver a speech. 

  • To be able to communicate in the manner of specialists in a field. 

  • To communicate or converse by some means other than orally, such as writing or facial expressions. 

noun
  • Speech, conversation. 

  • language, jargon, or terminology used uniquely in a particular environment or group. 

work the room

verb
  • To interact with one's audience, taking cues from its reactions and adapting one's performance or words to elicit the audience's attention and enthusiasm. 

  • To interact enthusiastically with the attendees at an event, by moving among them, greeting them, and engaging them in conversation. 

How often have the words speak and work the room occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )