DECLAIM • DICTIONARY ONE.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

... 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, ...

— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... he who so long With haughty Sullenness, and scornful Lowr, Had loath'd false Gods, and Arbitrary pow'r. 'Gainst Baal no Combatant more fierce than he; For Israels asserted Liberty, No Man more bold; with generous Rage enflam'd, Against the old ensnaring Test declaim'd. Beside, he bore a most peculiar Hate To sleeping Pilots, all Earth-clods of State. None more abhorr'd the Sycophant Buffoon, And Parasite, th'excrescence of a Throne; Creatures who their creating Sun disgrace, A Brood more abject than Niles Slime-born Race. Such was the Brave ...

— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... Lollius, declaim at Rome, I at Praeneste have perused over again the writer of the Trojan war; who teaches more clearly, and better than Chrysippus and Crantor, what is honorable, what shameful, what profitable, what not so. If nothing hinders you, hear why I have thus concluded. The story is which, on account ...

— The Works of Horace • Horace

... still 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 ...

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

... so, I'le teach her to declaim against my pities, why is she not gone out o'th' town, but gives occasion for men to ...

— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont

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