sermon

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Religious discourse; a written or spoken address on a religious or moral matter.

   One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.

2. 2
   verb

   To discourse to or of, as in a sermon.

   January 23 1583, Edmund Spenser, letter to Walter Raleigh To some I know this methode will seem displeasaunt, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then thus clowdily enwrapped in allegorical devises.

3. 3
   verb

   To tutor; to lecture.

   Come, sermon me no further.

4. 4
   noun

   a moralistic rebuke

From Middle English sermoun, from Anglo-Norman sermun and/or Old French sermon, from Latin sermō, sermōnem, from Proto-Indo-European *sermō, from *ser- (“to bind”) + *-mō.

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