SERMON • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Sermon

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/sˈərmən/ Listen

noun

Sermon n.

A discourse or address; a talk; a writing; as, the sermons of Chaucer. (Obs.)

Specifically, a discourse delivered in public, usually by a clergyman, for the purpose of religious instruction and grounded on some text or passage of Scripture. "This our life exempt from public haunts Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in everything." "His preaching much, but more his practice, wrought, A living sermon of the truths he taught."

Hence, a serious address; a lecture on one's conduct or duty; an exhortation or reproof; a homily; often in a depreciatory sense.

verb

Sermon v. t.

To discourse to or of, as in a sermon. (Obs.)

To tutor; to lecture. (Poetic)

Sermon v. i. To speak; to discourse; to compose or deliver a sermon. (Obs.) "What needeth it to sermon of it more?"

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Etymology of 'Sermon'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sermon" Quotes from Famous Books

... Sabbath after his arrival in New York Oswald attended church. Not since that Northfield visit had this son of a clergyman heard a sermon ...

— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... he was recalling these things to his memory, Frederick was really dreaming again. Suddenly he started up, cuffing Hans Fuellenberg furiously and saying: "I'll box your ears." Shortly afterward he was in the smoking-room delivering a crushing sermon for the third or fourth time, morally felling to the ground the man who had desecrated his sacred relation to Ingigerd. But the captain came in, and said they had to bury the stoker. There was a dead man on board. When Frederick stepped from the smoking-room, he saw the corpse lying in the ...

— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... "good point;" while a day on the moors is very unlikely to end without something being said on the treatment of dogs. When crossing the fields together from church, the tenants of adjacent farms are apt to pass from criticisms on the sermon to criticisms on the weather, the crops, and the stock; and thence to slide into discussions on the various kinds of fodder and their feeding qualities. Hodge and Giles, after comparing notes over their respective pig-styes, show by their remarks that they have been ...

— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... civilization, the focus of all that is comely in life. The ruddy shine of the stove is as beautiful as any sunset. A well-polished jug or spoon is as fair, as complete and beautiful, as any sonnet. The dish mop, properly rinsed and wrung and hung outside the back door to dry, is a whole sermon in itself. The stars never look so bright as they do from the kitchen door after the ice-box pan is emptied and the whole place is 'redd up,' as ...

— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... within sight of God's house and often going there, suffered the one great defeat of his life, entailing such a bitter, life-long reaping as might well deter others from the folly of sowing wild oats. David's sin is a terrific sermon (like Lot's preaching in Sodom must have been), its ...

— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism--The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd

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