as in to mouth (off)
to talk as if giving an important and formal speech
an arrogant scholar who never passes up an opportunity to posture and perorate on stunningly unimportant matters
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Recent Examples of perorate
As a black spiritual hums on the soundtrack, Hooded Justice perorates about the legacy of being the victim—not the complicit or recruited perpetrator—of violence:
My mama played the piano right over there.
—
Namwali Serpell, The New York Review of Books, 24 Mar. 2020
Namwali Serpell, The New York Review of Books, 24 Mar. 2020
Recent Examples of Synonyms for perorate
Verb
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Strictly speaking, the Democrats didn’t vote to end the shutdown.—
Jon Allsop,
New Yorker,
11 Nov. 2025
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Backstage later, Raw general manager Adam Pearce spoke about what just occurred with Punk, Jey, and Cody against The Vision.—
Matthew Couden,
MSNBC Newsweek,
11 Nov. 2025
Verb
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The cycle can become so accidentally ubiquitous that the former kids who blissfully existed outside of whatever discourses these trends or bands started in their heyday wonder now, as adults, what was so bad about them in the first place.—
Brittany Spanos,
Rolling Stone,
21 July 2025
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Admissions officers want to see that students will contribute meaningfully to discourse on campus.—
Christopher Rim,
Forbes.com,
17 July 2025
Verb
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The tone was all the more remarkable because Desmond had previously spoken admiringly of Rodgers’ coaching capabilities and did not harangue him as supporters did when Rodgers abruptly left Celtic for Leicester City in 2019.—
Michael Walker,
New York Times,
28 Oct. 2025
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Truman would never have harangued the international community that America is First, or obstructed every effort to better the lot of humanity by asking what’s in it for the U.S., not in coming decades but during this news cycle.—
Andreas Kluth,
Mercury News,
26 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Perorate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/perorate. Accessed 15 Nov. 2025.
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