exhort

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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🗓️ 13 December 2023

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 13, 2023 is:

exhort • \ig-ZORT\ • verb

To exhort someone is to try to strongly urge them to do something.

// The volunteers exhorted the young adults to register to vote before the upcoming election.

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Examples:

“Now and again, the band pauses as the musicians praise and exhort each other. ‘More cowbell.’ ‘Let’s do it for timing, and then we’ll break it down.’ ‘I would love a violin solo right there.’ ‘It’s G minor, not B-flat?’” — Reed Johnson, The Los Angeles Times, 18 Aug. 2023

Did you know?

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for December 13th.
0:07.0	Today's word is
0:12.0	Today's word is Exort, spelled E-X-H-O-R-T, Exort as a verb. It means to try to strongly urge someone to do something.
0:23.0	Here's the word used in a sentence from the Los Angeles Times by Reed Johnson.
0:28.0	Now and again, the band pauses as the musicians praise and exhort each other.
0:33.0	More cow bell.
0:34.0	Let's do it for timing, and then we'll break it down.
0:37.0	I would love a violin solo right there.
0:40.0	It's G minor, not B flat?
0:42.0	If you want to add a little oomph. It's G minor, not B flat?
0:48.0	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.
0:54.8	Arriving in the 15th century from the Anglo-French word exhorte
1:00.0	exhort traces back further to the Latin verb Hortari, meaning to incite to action, urge on or encourage.
1:08.0	Latin users added the prefix EX to Hortari to intensify it in essence ex-Hortari is a succinct way of saying
1:17.7	to really really urge the Latin words ad-Hortari it's meaning similar to that of ex-hotari, and de-hortari, meaning to dissuade,
1:28.0	also found their way into English as ad-hort and de-hort,ort respectively but neither of these words remain in current use.
1:37.0	With your word of the day I'm Peter Sokolowski.
1:40.0	Visit Marion Webster
1:44.4	Webster.com today for definitions, word play and trending word lookups.

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