Vehemently Definition & Meaning

Examples of vehement in a Sentence

Cranes rise above the old rooftops, adding new office towers and new condominiums and new malls to a city where Jonathan Swift once issued his vehement bulletins. — Pete Hamill, Gourmet, April 2007 As they shouted and mocked, I wondered how they could have developed such intense, vehement hatred toward people with whom they had had no previous contact. — Todd Hechtman, The News/Sun-Sentinel, 1 Feb. 1987 He cursed himself like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. — Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886 Both the ladies indulged in vehement screaming for several minutes; and Mr. Cymon Tuggs, besides sustaining intense bodily pain, had the additional mental anguish of witnessing their distressing situation, without having the power to rescue them, by reason of his leg being firmly screwed in between the animal and the wall. — Charles Dickens, Sketches by "Boz", 1836 He issued a vehement denial of the accusation. The proposal has faced vehement opposition from many teachers. She was vehement about the need for new safety measures. See More

Recent Examples on the Web The Alaska Redistricting Board has approved a new map of state Senate districts in Anchorage over the vehement objections of two board members who called the plan blatant gerrymandering and urged a state judge to overturn it. — James Brooks, Anchorage Daily News, 14 Apr. 2022 In my home state of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a permitless carry law in August of last year, over the vehement objections of law enforcement officers. — Art Acevedo, CNN, 8 Apr. 2022 Along with his many admirers, Massingale has some vehement critics, such as the conservative Catholic news outlet Church Militant, which depicts his LGBTQ advocacy as sinful. — NBC News, 14 Feb. 2022 Her claims were met then with vehement denials from Maxwell and from Buckingham Palace on behalf of the prince. — James Hill, ABC News, 29 Oct. 2021 Ever the political shape-shifter, Orban cut his teeth in the late 1980s with a young radical’s vehement opposition to the presence of then-Soviet troops in Hungary. — Laura Kingstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 9 Apr. 2022 The callers were impassioned and vehement, demanding that the hospital begin treating a covid patient in its care with ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug. — Washington Post, 26 Feb. 2022 After his remarks in the East Room on July 8 laying out a vehement defense of his decision to withdraw US troops, Biden was asked if a Taliban takeover was inevitable. — Betsy Klein, CNN, 14 Aug. 2021 Reasonable people can believe that the earliest grades are not the appropriate time to discuss sexuality or gender identity, so why the vehement opposition? — Evan Gerstmann, Forbes, 13 Mar. 2022 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'vehement.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

History and Etymology for vehement

borrowed from Middle French, going back to Old French, borrowed from Latin vehement-, vehemens, vēmens "violent, vigorous, (of feelings) overmastering, powerful," perhaps from vehere "to convey, carry along, drive" + -mens, adjective suffix (as in clēmens "mild, calm") of uncertain origin

Note: Alternatively explained as a prefix vē- "faulty, excessive or deficient" and ment-, mens "mind," in which case -ehe- is an unetymological spelling of the long vowel. Though this would account for vehemens in place of *vehimens (with normal vowel weakening), the word never has the sense "mentally deranged" (the meanings of the presumed parallel formations vēcors and vēsānus).

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