DECLAIM • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Declaim

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/dɪklˈeɪm/ Listen

verb

Declaim v. t.

To utter in public; to deliver in a rhetorical or set manner.

To defend by declamation; to advocate loudly. (Obs.) "Declaims his cause."

Declaim v. i. (past & past part. declaimed; pres. part. declaiming)

To speak rhetorically; to make a formal speech or oration; to harangue; specifically, to recite a speech, poem, etc., in public as a rhetorical exercise; to practice public speaking; as, the students declaim twice a week.

To speak for rhetorical display; to speak pompously, noisily, or theatrically; to make an empty speech; to rehearse trite arguments in debate; to rant. "Grenville seized the opportunity to declaim on the repeal of the stamp act."

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Etymology of 'Declaim'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Declaim" Quotes from Famous Books

... devout, pious, and earnest man, and a good exhorter, and had an unfaltering faith that the Lord was immediately to appear. But his wife was the smartest one in the family. She was fluent and voluble. She had an unabashed forehead and a bitter and defiant tongue. It was her hobby to declaim against the popular idea of the existence of the human spirit apart from the body. With her this was equivalent to a witch riding on a broomstick or going to heaven on a moonbeam. Spirit is breath—so she dogmatically affirmed—and ...

— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... high—twenty paces from home you let it sink, and fold your hands behind your back. You look and evidently see nothing before nor beside you. At last you begin moving your lips and talking to yourself, and sometimes you wave one hand and declaim, and at last stand still in the middle of the road. That's not at all the thing. Someone may be watching you besides me, and it won't do you any good. It's nothing really to do with me and I can't cure you, but, of course, ...

— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Haydock, they were chiefly influenced by curiosity. "His auditory were willing to silence him by pulling, haling, and pinching him, yet would he pertinaciously persist to the end, and sleep still." The King was introduced into Haydock's bedroom, heard him declaim, and next day cross-examined him in private. Awed by the royal acuteness, Haydock confessed that he was a humbug, and that he had taken to preaching all night by way of getting a little notoriety, and because he felt himself to be "a buried ...

— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... which, as it cannot prosper unless it begin from the Government and the upper ranks in society, has no attraction for demagogues and mob-exciting patriots. They understand their game; and, as if the people could in no way be so effectually benefited as by rendering their Government suspected, they declaim against taxes; and, by their clamours for reduction of public expenditure, drown the counter-suggestions from the 'still small voice' of moderation appealing to circumstances. 'Cry aloud, and spare not!—Retrench and lop off!' and so they ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... less a reflection of life is that the speakers indulge in interminably long harangues. No man (unless he were a Coleridge) would be tolerated who talked in society at such inordinate length. When the characters can't talk to one another they retire to their chambers and declaim to themselves. They polish their language with the same care, open the classical dictionary, and have at themselves in good set terms. Philautus, inflamed with love of Camilla, goes to his room and pronounces a ten-minute discourse on the pangs of love, having only himself for auditor. ...

— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

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