HOMILY

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does homily mean? 

• HOMILY (noun)
  The noun HOMILY has 1 sense:

1. a sermon on a moral or religious topic

  Familiarity information: HOMILY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HOMILY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A sermon on a moral or religious topic

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

homily; preachment

Hypernyms ("homily" is a kind of...):

discourse; preaching; sermon (an address of a religious nature (usually delivered during a church service))

Derivation:

homiletic (of or relating to homiletics)

homiletic; homiletical (of the nature of a homily or sermon)

 Context examples 

No company, a walk, a family dinner of four, and an evening of looking over books and pictures; Miss Murdstone with a homily before her, and her eye upon us, keeping guard vigilantly.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Jo must have fallen asleep (as I dare say my reader has during this little homily), for suddenly Laurie's ghost seemed to stand before her, a substantial, lifelike ghost, leaning over her with the very look he used to wear when he felt a good deal and didn't like to show it.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)