sermon

plural sermons · alternative dialectal sarmon

1. Religious discourse; a written or spoken address on a religious or moral matter.

   1 more example

   One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter III, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

2. A lengthy speech of reproval.

   Synonyms: browbeating, dressing down, lecture, berating, browbeating, chiding, chockling, correption

present singular third person sermons · participle present sermoning · participle past sermoned · past sermoned

1. obsoletepoeticTo discourse to or of, as in a sermon.

   January 23 1583, Edmund Spenser, letter to Walter Raleigh To some I know this methode will seem displeasaunt, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then thus clowdily enwrapped in allegorical devises

2. obsoletepoeticTo tutor; to lecture.

   Come, sermon me no further.

   c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii], line 177