Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

exhort

UK/ɛɡˈzɔːt/US/ɛɡˈzɔɹt/
verbC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — exhortation sits at #14,715neutralformal · an editor’s judgement

Other forms: exhorted, exhorting, exhorts

To exhort somebody is to urge them strongly to act. Not asking — pressing.

It takes to and a verb. The word is formal and slightly biblical, and it suits speeches, sermons and manifestos, so a leader exhorting supporters to keep going is standard. It implies moral weight behind the urging rather than mere persuasion. The noun is exhortation. Urge is the everyday equivalent, and implore is the version where you are begging rather than commanding.

Definitions of exhort

  1. 1verbexhortTo urge somebody strongly to do something.C1

    “The letter exhorts members to attend.”

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *gʰer-

  2. Latin

    exhortor — to encourage

  3. Old French

    exhorter

  4. Middle English

    exorten

  5. English, today

    exhort

From Middle English exorten, from Old French exhorter, from Latin exhortor (“to encourage”), from ex + hortārī.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 30 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

exhort in the wild

  • The 11th verse describes the required attitude of the true believers that they exhort to faith in messenger and the regarding bounties.

    At-Talaq

  • Encyclicals may condemn errors, point out threats to faith and morals, exhort faithful practices or provide remedies for present and future dangers to the church.

    List of encyclicals of Pope John XXIII

  • Divorcing his wife, he took up the life of an itinerant preacher to live in poverty and exhort the community to repentance.

    Shukr Kuhayl I

  • As part of shamanic practice, they exhort the people on various matters, practiced divination (Kanakku) to discern the causes of sickness and misfortunes, and 'foretold future happenings'.

    Shamanism in Ayyavazhi

  • The texts exhort various Egyptian gods to accept the deceased into their company.

    Books of Breathing

1 / 2

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.

Related words

the exhortor family

exhortation

exhort — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others