PREACHING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does preaching mean? 

• PREACHING (noun)
  The noun PREACHING has 2 senses:

1. an address of a religious nature (usually delivered during a church service)

2. a moralistic rebuke

  Familiarity information: PREACHING used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PREACHING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An address of a religious nature (usually delivered during a church service)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

discourse; preaching; sermon

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

address; speech (the act of delivering a formal spoken communication to an audience)

Domain category:

church; church service (a service conducted in a house of worship)

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

baccalaureate (a farewell sermon to a graduating class at their commencement ceremonies)

kerugma; kerygma (preaching the gospel of Christ in the manner of the early church)

evangelism (zealous preaching and advocacy of the gospel)

homily; preachment (a sermon on a moral or religious topic)

Instance hyponyms:

Sermon on the Mount (the first major discourse delivered by Jesus (Matthew 5-7 and Luke 6:20-49))

Derivation:

preach (deliver a sermon)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A moralistic rebuke

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

preaching; sermon

Context example:

your preaching is wasted on him

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

lecture; speech; talking to (a lengthy rebuke)

Derivation:

preach (speak, plead, or argue in favor of)

 Context examples 

As I understand your words, you are grieved that you ever met me, and look upon me as a preaching devil.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You and those like you have been preaching peace for nigh two thousand years, and cutting throats the whole time.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had started out preaching it to his sister and brother-in-law.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have always so much.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Preaching does not do any good, as I know to my sorrow, since I've had Teddie to manage.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

There is now a spirit of improvement abroad; but among those who were ordained twenty, thirty, forty years ago, the larger number, to judge by their performance, must have thought reading was reading, and preaching was preaching.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

From time to time I forsook my own thoughts to follow him, and I followed in amaze, mastered for the moment by his remarkable intellect, under the spell of his passion, for he was preaching the passion of revolt.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

To hear such words from your lips is as though I heard an angel of grace preaching the devil's own creed.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And there was my aunt, all the time I was dressing, preaching and talking away just as if she was reading a sermon.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

After all their preaching and throwing my father’s model life, as they called it, in my teeth, they had to pay his debts to the tune of nearly a million, whilst I can’t get a hundred thousand out of them.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)