PREACHER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does preacher mean? 

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

1. someone whose occupation is preaching the gospel

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• PREACHER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone whose occupation is preaching the gospel

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

preacher; preacher man; sermoniser; sermonizer

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

clergyman; man of the cloth; reverend (a member of the clergy and a spiritual leader of the Christian Church)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "preacher"):

evangelist; gospeler; gospeller; revivalist (a preacher of the Christian gospel)

Instance hyponyms:

Bunyan; John Bunyan (English preacher and author of an allegorical novel, Pilgrim's Progress (1628-1688))

John Chrysostom; St. John Chrysostom ((Roman Catholic Church) a Church Father who was a great preacher and bishop of Constantinople; a saint and Doctor of the Church (347-407))

Derivation:

preach (deliver a sermon)

 Context examples 

The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were softened.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“You’re a preacher, aren’t you?” he asked.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

My fine preacher can himself be tempted then, thought I; he is not made of another clay to the rest of us.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I never listened to a distinguished preacher in my life without a sort of envy.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It is necessary for human health, so all the preachers say, and Heaven knows I've never been afraid of it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

I told him that, unhappily for the burial service, I was not a preacher, when he sharply demanded: What do you do for a living?

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

They are known to the largest part only as preachers.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A fine preacher is followed and admired; but it is not in fine preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful in his parish and his neighbourhood, where the parish and neighbourhood are of a size capable of knowing his private character, and observing his general conduct, which in London can rarely be the case.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn threadbare in all common hands; who can say anything new or striking, anything that rouses the attention without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not, in his public capacity, honour enough.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)