Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To speak in a formal, often pompous manner.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To make an oration; talk loftily; harangue.
Wiktionary
- v. To speak formally; to give a speech.
- v. To speak passionately; to preach for or against something.
WordNet 3.0
- v. talk pompously
Etymologies
- Back formation from oration, from Latin ōrātiō ("speech, discourse, oration"), from ōrātus ("spoken, orated"), from ōrō ("speak, pray"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin ōrāre, ōrāt-, to pray, speak publicly. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Sen. Obama, like many other politicians, uses teleprompters, so his great ability to orate is based mainly on his ability to read and not speak from the hip.”
“Nunzio told the defense attorney not to "orate" when making objections but to state his arguments, and he was irritated by Judge Alexander's aggressive behavior toward witnesses.”
The Washington Post: Harry T. Alexander, 85; controversial D.C. judge, defense lawyer
“Certainly, those who were wont to "orate" in the building when it stood in Brompton would have failed to recognise the edifice as it arose in”
“Rather than orate alone in front of a camera, McDonnell took refuge in the Virginia House of [...]”
Matthew Yglesias » Bob McDonnell To Attempt First Non-Horrible SOTU Response in American History
“The fact that individual reporters would still have rights to distribute homemade handbills or orate from a soapbox would mean little.”
“When pressed to orate—as in his farewell toast to his officers or when he returned his sword to Congress after the Revolutionary War—Washington uttered some fine phrases, but he didn't give a single speech to the Continental Congresses.”
“Yes, I have been to half a dozen of their meetings, but that doesn't make me a socialist any more than hearing Charley Hapgood orate made me”
“Requiring those filibustering to stand before cameras and orate gives them the opportunity for viewers of C-Span, Twitter, and the like to let the whole world see how brilliant they are.”
“For decades, senators who wanted to filibuster had to actually orate in the Senate chamber.”
“Would Martin Luther King Jr., if his mother had not taught him to stand up and recite scripture to her, have developed the courage and chari sma to orate, "I have a dream?”
The Wall Street Journal: What Cards Never Say on Mother's Day
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘orate’.
-
Talk Talk
Words for Talking
( open list, randomness )squawk, gab, chatter, chitchat, blab, prattle, blather, discuss, hector, plead, cajole, harangue and 200 more...
-
WF - list of EN back-formations
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations
aborigine, accrete, acculturate, admix, admixture, adolesce, adsorb, adulate, advect, aesthete, air-condition, anticline and 212 more...
-
Serendipity's Words
defenestration, mercurial, syzygy, wicked, iniquitous, metastable, demimonde, entropic, ephemeral, irreligious, frisbee, manifold and 474 more...
-
Baby Got Back-Formations
"A new word created by removing an affix from an already existing word, as vacuum clean from vacuum cleaner, or by removing what is mistakenly thought to be an affix, as pea from the earlier Englis...
resurrect, enthuse, couth, donate, emote, greed, isolate, manipulate, orate, prequel, spectate, upholster and 94 more...
-
Missale Romanum
Latin words from the ordinary of the Mass that do not have obvious English cognates. For a complete list of words used in the Traditional Latin Mass (the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite), see ...
lætíficat, dolóso, érue, incédo, dum, confitébor, contúrbas, spera, quóniam, adhuc, illi, vultus and 169 more...
-
big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for orate.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.