-ˈjī-rik
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On certain fixed dates throughout the year, the ancient Greeks would come together for religious meetings. Such gatherings could range from hometown affairs to great national assemblies, but large or small, the meeting was called a panēgyris. That name comes from pan, meaning "all," and agyris, meaning "assembly." At those assemblies, speakers provided the main entertainment, and they delivered glowing orations extolling the praises of present civic leaders and reliving the past glories of Greek cities. To the Greeks, those laudatory speeches were panēgyrikos, which means "of or for a panēgyris." Latin speakers ultimately transformed panēgyrikos into the noun panegyricus, and English speakers adapted that Latin term to form panegyric.
Examples of panegyric in a Sentence
David Denby,
New Yorker,
20 July 2025
The whole film is a panegyric: big speeches and weighty moments with very little sense of play.
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Amy Nicholson,
Los Angeles Times,
15 May 2025
Buckley’s magazine, National Review, the flagship of the movement, published regular panegyrics to anti-communist generalissimos, heaping adoration on the likes of the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo, Portugal’s Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, and Spain’s Francisco Franco.
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Franklin Foer,
The Atlantic,
1 Mar. 2024
For example, Kenneth Khachigian, chief speechwriter for former President Ronald Reagan, wrote a panegyric about her for The Wall Street Journal, which went so far as to compare her to the Gipper.
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Robert Robb,
CNN,
31 Oct. 2022
At Night Market, a young Filipina chef named Strawberry conjured a mouthwatering panegyric to Middle East cuisine.
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Christopher P. Baker,
Travel + Leisure,
2 Mar. 2022
Leave it to Grant Park Music Festival artistic director Carlos Kalmar to make sense of a head-scratcher of a season closer: A sprawling, somewhat obscure military panegyric by Handel.
—
Hannah Edgar,
chicagotribune.com,
21 Aug. 2021
Yet, once the protagonist Vellitt Boe leaves her capricious, cruel fantasy realm behind, there follows a panegyric to this world.
—
Siddhartha Deb,
The New Republic,
19 Mar. 2021
Cite this Entry
“Panegyric.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/panegyric. Accessed 25 Jun. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
panegyric
noun
-ˈjī-rik
