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If you want to add a little oomph to your urge in speech or writing—and formal oomph at that—we exhort you to try using exhort as a synonym instead. Arriving in the 15th century from the Anglo-French word exorter, exhort traces back further to the Latin verb hortari, meaning “to incite to action, urge on, or encourage.” Latin users added the prefix ex- to hortari to intensify it; in essence, exhortari is a succinct way of saying “to really, really urge.” The Latin words adhortari (its meaning similar to that of exhortari) and dehortari (“to dissuade”) also found their way into English as adhort and dehort, respectively, but neither of these remains in current use.
Synonyms
Examples of exhort in a Sentence
Rebecca Plevin, Los Angeles Times, 5 Apr. 2024
Images and videos of war proliferate on the app, as do posts exhorting people to punish Mr. Biden’s support for Israel by not voting for him in 2024, paying little regard to his administration’s push for a bilateral cease-fire agreement and more aid into Gaza.
—Anjali Huynh, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2024
Trump exhorted a crowd to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress gathered to certify his opponent’s win and then resisted requests to call for peace after his supporters turned violent.
—Jonathan Shorman, Kansas City Star, 22 Mar. 2024
Reyna played long, lyrical guitar solos over her bandmate’s pulsing beats and exhorted her audience to remember the indigenous ancestors who tended the land first.
—Cat Cardenas, Rolling Stone, 14 Mar. 2024
Low ceilings, long clear sightlines and placards exhorting good behavior in English and Tamil completed the effect.
—Alex Travelli, New York Times, 2 Feb. 2024
The smaller Union contingent quickly surrendered, and Forrest exhorted his men to slaughter them — especially the black soldiers.
—Daniel Foster, National Review, 30 Nov. 2023
There is plenty to exhort, and lots of talk between songs.
—Tim Davis, New York Times, 13 Feb. 2024
Some would exhort that the generative AI has passed the buck.
—Lance Eliot, Forbes, 14 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'exhort.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near exhort
Cite this Entry
“Exhort.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exhort. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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