proclamation
Americannoun
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proclamations
plural
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something that is proclaimed; a public and official announcement.
-
the act of proclaiming.
Usage
What does proclamation mean? A proclamation is an official announcement made in public. Proclamation is the noun form of the verb proclaim, meaning to announce or declare something in an official or formal manner. Proclamations are typically made by public officials. Like the similar word announcement, proclamation is often used with the verb make. Example: The mayor called a press conference to issue a proclamation declaring an official citywide day of celebration for the new champions of baseball.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of proclamation
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English proclamacioun (from Middle French proclamacion, ) from Latin prōclāmātiōn- (stem of prōclāmātiō ), equivalent to prōclāmāt(us) (past participle of prōclāmāre “to cry out, proclaim ”) + -iōn- -ion
Explanation
A proclamation is a formal public statement. If the mayor of your town issued a proclamation honoring the state champion field hockey team, this is an official statement of praise and celebration. A major statement made in front of an audience or the authoritative word on some subject is a proclamation. It's usually used in an official or government context, although an ordinary person can also make a proclamation, like your proclamation that you'll never dance again after your embarrassment at last week's hip hop recital. The root is proclaim, declare publicly, though the i is dropped in proclamation.
Vocabulary lists containing proclamation
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech (1963)
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The American Civil War
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The Emancipation Proclamation (1862)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
According to the proclamation announced Thursday, the duties are tiered according to the capacity of the drones and their place of origin.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Her proclamation of optimism comes on the heels of her having been released in December from a brutal Belarusian prison for supporting an opposition candidate running against the country’s authoritarian leader.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2026
Hathaway’s gospel-infused arrangement and call-and-response with a crowd at the Troubadour transformed Carole King’s song from a private promise into a proclamation of Black resilience.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
Chief EU observer Annalisa Corrado urged candidates to "wait patiently for the official proclamation of the results."
From Barron's ● Jun. 9, 2026
But after that horrifying day of the proclamation of the edict of expulsion, Mother takes down our mezuzah, which announces we are Jewish, to bring to our new home.
From "Across So Many Seas" by Ruth Behar
Even before the GPT-2 paper, A.I. insiders have been issuing apocalyptic, god-in-the-machine proclamations about this software, professing fears that observers rarely followed up on and that almost never lived up to scrutiny.
From Slate ● Sep. 15, 2026
He is not the first AI researcher to use X to post a resignation thread with worrying proclamations.
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026
Reading the proclamations reveals another layer of awful.
From Salon ● Jun. 29, 2026
Around Angel’s old barber chair, just about every inch of wall space is occupied by proclamations and photos.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
The Al Ulbrickson she knew never made proclamations like that, seldom said anything even remotely suggesting what his hopes and dreams were, even at home, let alone in the newspapers.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
