An embodiment of a speech endpoint detector apparatus may include a speech detector to detect a presence of speech in an electronic speech signal, a pause duration measurer communicatively coupled to the speech detector to measure a duration of a pause following a period of detected speech, an end of utterance detector communicatively coupled to the pause duration measurer to detect if the pause measured following the period of detected speech is greater than a pause threshold corresponding to an end of an utterance, and a pause threshold adjuster to adaptively adjust the pause threshold corresponding to an end of an utterance based on stored pause information. Other embodiments are disclosed and claimed.