sermonize

American  

[sur-muh-nahyz] / ˈsɜr məˌnaɪz /

especially British, sermonise

verb (used without object)

sermonized, sermonizing

1. to deliver or compose a sermon; preach.

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verb (used with object)

sermonized, sermonizing

1. to give exhortation to; lecture.

sermonize British  

/ ˈsɜːməˌnaɪz /

verb

1. to talk to or address (a person or audience) as if delivering a sermon

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Other Word Forms

• sermonizer
  noun

Etymology

Origin of sermonize

First recorded in 1625–35; sermon + -ize

Explanation

To sermonize is to lecture someone in the style of a minister delivering a sermon. The best teachers don't sermonize; they talk to students in a sincere and straightforward way. If you tell someone at length what they should do, especially if there's plenty of judgment and moral superiority in your speech, you sermonize. This verb can also be used simply to mean "give a sermon," so you could also say that you like church because your minister sermonizes so well. This was the earliest meaning of sermonize, which comes from the Latin sermo, "speech, conversation, or talk."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sermonize sermonized sermonizing

This upcoming Easter Sunday, he intends to sermonize on which one would prevail.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 7, 2020

His family attended weekly Mass to hear McGuire sermonize and took part in his spiritual retreats, events where McGuire began to acquire a cult-like following.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 30, 2019

With a zealous quickening, Brooks begins to sermonize, not about his own soul but the country’s.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 29, 2019

Hill has a salty beard, smiling eyes and booming voice to sermonize about the suffering he sees so often in the Shenandoah Valley.

From Washington Times ● Nov. 12, 2018

My grandmother was the only white person who ever heard W. D. Fard sermonize, and she understood less than half of what he said.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

“Haha You Clowns” isn’t like the old “Davey and Goliath” or “South Park,” which purposely sermonized.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2025

The Rev. Charles Cannon, pastor at St. Hilary’s Episcopal Church, sermonized about the temporariness of the community’s losses.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 3, 2022

“This is a driver for the entire United States economy,” O’Rourke sermonized to a crowd packed into the banquet hall at the Social Club in Edinburg.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2018

When Arnold, “rapt in devotion or vibrant with exhortation,” sermonized in Rugby chapel, it is said that he “propounded the general principles both of his own conduct and that of the Almighty.”

From Washington Post ● Jan. 30, 2018

Her religious views had modified since the days long past when she had sermonized so earnestly to George Blood.

From Mary Wollstonecraft by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

And Hall took his own sermonizing to heart.

From Slate ● Sep. 18, 2026

But Perkins hops so quickly from one outrageous death to another that his screenplay leaves little room for rumination amid his constant fatalist sermonizing.

From Salon ● Feb. 21, 2025

Are viewers craving more carnage and darkness or cable news sermonizing?

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2023

Flanagan’s mix of Christian and vampiric lore and imagery is clever, though the later episodes are a little heavy on sermonizing and philosophical exposition.

From New York Times ● Oct. 15, 2021

Old Caleb came in and ate quickly, sermonizing Mr. Ablethorpe all the time, and as long as he was there we were all as quiet as mice.

From Deep Moat Grange by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett