Word of the Day

: March 14, 2014

exhort

verb ig-ZORT

What It Means

: to incite by argument or advice : urge strongly

exhort in Context

The celebrity speaker exhorted all citizens to get out and vote on Election Day.

"What I will do is exhort him to come clean about the difference between Windows 8 and Windows RT that directly impacts customers." - From a blog by James Kendrick on ZDNet, February 7, 2014

Did You Know?

"Exhort" is a 15th-century coinage. It derives from the Latin verb "hortari," meaning "to incite," and it often implies the ardent urging or admonishing of an orator or preacher. People in the 16th century apparently liked the root "-hort," but they couldn't resist fiddling around with different prefixes to create other words similar in meaning to "exhort." They came up with "adhort" and "dehort." "Adhort" was short-lived and became obsolete after the 17th century. "Dehort" was similar to "exhort" and "adhort" but with a more specific meaning of "to dissuade." It had a better run than "adhort," being used well into the late 19th century, but it is now considered archaic.