declaim
/dɪˈkleɪm
/verb [reporting verb]
Utter or deliver words in a rhetorical or impassioned way, as if to an audience: [with object]: she declaimed her views [no object]: a preacher declaiming from the pulpit an opportunity to declaim against the evils of society...
- That these same words had been declaimed ten years earlier in rather different circumstances is not mentioned.
- You can actually understand his words, and he declaims poetry as if he knows what it means.
- In 1926, when O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, was produced, there were violent scenes, Yeats declaiming to the audience that they had disgraced themselves again.
Synonyms
make a speech, give an address, give a talk, give a lecture, make an oration, deliver a sermon, give a sermon;
speak, hold forth, orate, pronounce, preach, lecture, sermonize, moralize
informal sound off, mouth off, spiel, spout, speechify, preachify, jaw
rare perorate
recite, say aloud, read aloud, read out loud, read out;
quote, deliver, render
informal spout
rare bespout
speak out, protest strongly, make a protest, make a stand, rail, inveigh, fulminate, rage, thunder;
rant about, expostulate about, make a fuss about, express disapproval of;
condemn, criticize, castigate, attack, decry, disparage
informal mouth off about, kick up a stink about, go on about
rare vociferate
Derivatives
declaimer
- High points include the assessment of the orator Cassius Severus and his comparative failure as a declaimer.
- Apollonios of Athens won a name for himself among the Greeks as an able speaker in the legal branch of oratory, and as a declaimer he was not to be despised.
- Do they read traditional suppliers of journalistic information, or mostly declaimers of opinions?
Origin
Late Middle English: from French déclamer or Latin declamare, from de- (expressing thoroughness) + clamare 'to shout'.