Library / English Dictionary

PREACH

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Speak, plead, or argue in favor of

Example:

The doctor advocated a smoking ban in the entire house

Synonyms:

advocate; preach

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "preach" is one way to...):

exhort; press; urge; urge on (force or impel in an indicated direction)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "preach"):

moralise; moralize; preachify; sermonise; sermonize (speak as if delivering a sermon; express moral judgements)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody to INFINITIVE
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE
Somebody ----s to somebody

Derivation:

preaching (a moralistic rebuke)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Deliver a sermon

Example:

The minister is not preaching this Sunday

Synonyms:

preach; prophesy

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "preach" is one way to...):

lecture; talk (deliver a lecture or talk)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "preach"):

evangelise; evangelize (preach the gospel (to))

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Something ----s to somebody
Somebody ----s on something

Sentence example:

Sam and Sue preach

Derivation:

preacher (someone whose occupation is preaching the gospel)

preaching (an address of a religious nature (usually delivered during a church service))

preachment (a sermon on a moral or religious topic)

Credits

 Context examples: 

I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

From time to time I forsook my own thoughts to follow him, and I followed in amaze, mastered for the moment by his remarkable intellect, under the spell of his passion, for he was preaching the passion of revolt.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Ah! my dear little coz, it is easy to sit in the sunshine and preach to the man in the shadow.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Preaching does not do any good, as I know to my sorrow, since I've had Teddie to manage.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Bertram, said Henry Crawford, I shall make a point of coming to Mansfield to hear you preach your first sermon.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

And there was my aunt, all the time I was dressing, preaching and talking away just as if she was reading a sermon.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

"You have no right to preach to me, you neophyte, that have not passed the porch of life, and are absolutely unacquainted with its mysteries."

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

After all their preaching and throwing my father’s model life, as they called it, in my teeth, they had to pay his debts to the tune of nearly a million, whilst I can’t get a hundred thousand out of them.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Renunciation, sacrifice, patience, industry, and high endeavor were the principles she thus indirectly preached—such abstractions being objectified in her mind by her father, and Mr. Butler, and by Andrew Carnegie, who, from a poor immigrant boy had arisen to be the book-giver of the world.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)