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Discourse   /dˈɪskɔrs/   Listen
noun
Discourse  n.  
1.
The power of the mind to reason or infer by running, as it were, from one fact or reason to another, and deriving a conclusion; an exercise or act of this power; reasoning; range of reasoning faculty. (Obs.) "Difficult, strange, and harsh to the discourses of natural reason." "Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused."
2.
Conversation; talk. "In their discourses after supper." "Filling the head with variety of thoughts, and the mouth with copious discourse."
3.
The art and manner of speaking and conversing. "Of excellent breeding, admirable discourse."
4.
Consecutive speech, either written or unwritten, on a given line of thought; speech; treatise; dissertation; sermon, etc.; as, the preacher gave us a long discourse on duty.
5.
Dealing; transaction. (Obs.) "Good Captain Bessus, tell us the discourse Betwixt Tigranes and our king, and how We got the victory."


verb
Discourse  v. t.  
1.
To treat of; to expose or set forth in language. (Obs.) "The life of William Tyndale... is sufficiently and at large discoursed in the book."
2.
To utter or give forth; to speak. "It will discourse most eloquent music."
3.
To talk to; to confer with. (Obs.) "I have spoken to my brother, who is the patron, to discourse the minister about it."


Discourse  v. i.  (past & past part. discoursed; pres. part. discoursing)  
1.
To exercise reason; to employ the mind in judging and inferring; to reason. (Obs.) "Have sense or can discourse."
2.
To express one's self in oral discourse; to expose one's views; to talk in a continuous or formal manner; to hold forth; to speak; to converse. "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear."
3.
To relate something; to tell.
4.
To treat of something in writing and formally.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Discourse" Quotes from Famous Books



... believes this doctrine. The word and its derivatives are, however, nowadays, both in this country and in England, most used in a humane, philanthropic sense; thus, "The audience enthusiastically endorsed the humanitarianism of his eloquent discourse."—Hatton. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... in fact, to shine in a democratic society much like our own and to control the votes and command the approval of an intelligent populace where the function of printing-press, telegraph, railroad, and all modern means of communication were performed through public speech and private discourse, and where the legal, ecclesiastical, and other professional classes of teachers did not exist." (Monroe, Paul, History of Education, pp. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... said Jimmy, "has been Plain Living and High Thinking. We have fleeted the time in earnest discourse. It began on the way home with the Professor asking me some innocent question concerning what he called the 'Science' of Ju-Jitsu. I told him that it was of Japanese origin, as its name implied, and further that he did wrong to call it a Science; it was really ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the secret springs of life keep working continually in the dark, whether we regard them or not—working oftentimes harshly for want of the oil of human intercourse and sympathy. The floodgates were now opened, and the two friends began to discourse on things pertaining to the soul and the Saviour and the world to come, whereby they found that their appreciation and enjoyment of the good things even of this life was increased considerably. Subsequently they discovered the explanation of this increased power of enjoyment, in that Word which ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thomas Westwood, whose gentle poetry, it is to be feared, has won but few listeners, has drawn this fancy picture of the commotion in St. Dunstan's Churchyard on a May morning of the year 1653, when Richard Marriott first published the famous discourse, little dreaming that he had been chosen for the godfather of so distinguished an immortality. The lines form an epilogue to twelve beautiful sonnets a propos of the ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton


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