DENOUNCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does denounce mean? 

• DENOUNCE (verb)
  The verb DENOUNCE has 4 senses:

1. speak out against

2. to accuse or condemn or openly or formally or brand as disgraceful

3. announce the termination of, as of treaties

4. give away information about somebody

  Familiarity information: DENOUNCE used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DENOUNCE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they denounce    ... he / she / it denounces   
Past simple: denounced   
Past participle: denounced   
-ing form: denouncing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Speak out against

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Context example:

He denounced the Nazis

Hypernyms (to "denounce" is one way to...):

criticise; criticize; knock; pick apart (find fault with; express criticism of; point out real or perceived flaws)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "denounce"):

fulminate; rail (criticize severely)

condemn; decry; excoriate; objurgate; reprobate (express strong disapproval of)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Derivation:

denouncement (a public act of denouncing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

To accuse or condemn or openly or formally or brand as disgraceful

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

brand; denounce; mark; stigmatise; stigmatize

Context example:

She was stigmatized by society because she had a child out of wedlock

Hypernyms (to "denounce" is one way to...):

label (assign a label to; designate with a label)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

denouncement (a public act of denouncing)

denunciative (containing warning of punishment)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Announce the termination of, as of treaties

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "denounce" is one way to...):

announce; denote (make known; make an announcement)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sense 4

Meaning:

Give away information about somebody

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

betray; denounce; give away; grass; rat; shit; shop; snitch; stag; tell on

Context example:

He told on his classmate who had cheated on the exam

Hypernyms (to "denounce" is one way to...):

inform (impart knowledge of some fact, state of affairs, or event to)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "denounce"):

sell someone out (give information that compromises others)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

 Context examples 

It was a most unfortunate moment for denouncing Amy, and Jenny knew it.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You would not denounce the man?

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“He has gone to denounce me,” said Lord Avon, a spasm of wounded pride distorting his features.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I denounced myself as a remorseless brute and a ruthless beast.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Should she indeed awake, and see me, and curse me, and denounce the murderer?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

When therefore he went out, all four of them confessed to him that they had stolen the money, and said that they would willingly restore it and give him a heavy sum into the bargain, if he would not denounce them, for if he did they would be hanged.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

When she is released she will, of course, denounce them.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Not being a genius, like Keats, it won't kill me, she said stoutly, and I've got the joke on my side, after all, for the parts that were taken straight out of real life are denounced as impossible and absurd, and the scenes that I made up out of my own silly head are pronounced 'charmingly natural, tender, and true'.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I bound myself by the required promise, in a most impassioned manner; called upon Traddles to witness it; and denounced myself as the most atrocious of characters if I ever swerved from it in the least degree.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)