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espouse

UK/ɪˈspaʊz/<a:UK>US/ɪˈspaʊz/<a:UK>
verbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,709 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: espoused, espousing, espouses

To espouse is to take up a cause and support it openly. Espouse a cause, espouse the theory, espouse free trade.

The older meaning is to marry, and the two are the same idea, since to espouse a cause is to be wedded to it. It implies public commitment rather than quiet agreement.

Definitions of espouse

  1. 1verbespouseTo take up and support a cause.C1

    “The party came to espouse the very policy it had once attacked.”

espouse is a supporting.

Where it comes from

Old French espouser comes from Latin sponsare, to betroth, from spondere, to promise; the marriage sense came first.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *spend-

  2. Latin

    spōnsō

  3. Old French

    espouser

  4. Middle English

    espousen

  5. English, today

    espouse

From Middle English espousen, borrowed from Old French espouser, from Latin spōnsō (frequentative of spondeō), from Proto-Indo-European spend-.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

espouse in the wild

  • The following is a list of political parties which espouse Hindu nationalist ideologies.

    List of Hindu nationalist political parties

  • Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle has been cited as "the first to espouse the 'dignity of work'".

    Dignity of labour

  • Reservations for underprivileged persons in public institutions is one of the policies devised by the Indian Legislature to espouse the cause of the disadvantaged.

    Ashoka Kumar Thakur v. Union of India

  • Some Syriac Christians in the Middle East espouse an Aramean ethnic identity, and a minority still speak various Neo-Aramaic languages, with the Eastern branch being widely spoken.

    Arameans in Israel

  • Synthwave musicians often espouse nostalgia for 1980s culture and attempt to capture the era's atmosphere and celebrate it.

    Synthwave

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.