Word.ws English Dictionary

preach

/pɹiːt͡ʃ/US/pɹit͡ʃ/

preach verb: to give a sermon.

Verb

preach (third-person singular simple present preaches, present participle preaching, simple past and past participle preached or (nonstandard) praught)

  1. (intransitive) To give a sermon.
    • Our pastor can preach very well.
    • One saint’s day in mid-term a certain newly-appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 26
  2. (transitive) To proclaim by public discourse; to utter in a sermon or a formal religious harangue.
    • The Spirit of the Lord God is vpon me, therefore hathe the Lord anointed me: he hathe ſent me to preache good tidings vnto the poore,[…]1560, [William Whittingham et al., transl.], The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament. […] (the Geneva Bible), Geneva: […] Rouland Hall, →OCLC, Isaiah LXI:1, folio 304...
  3. (transitive) To advise or recommend earnestly.
    • My Mʳ preaches patience to him,[…]c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  4. (transitive) To teach or instruct by preaching; to inform by preaching.
    • The Spirits of the Dead, / Quitting their mortal mansion, enter not, / As falsely ye are preached, their final seat / Of bliss, or bale;[…]1801, Robert Southey, “The Ninth Book”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume II, London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC, page 149
  5. (intransitive) To give advice in an offensive or obtrusive manner.
    • Papa, don't preach, I'm in trouble, deep / Papa, don't preach, I've been losing sleep1986, Brian Elliot, Madonna, “Papa Don't Preach”, performed by Madonna

Noun

preach (plural preaches)

  1. (obsolete) A religious discourse.
    • he make peace in his preaches and play with esteem1939 May 4, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, London: Faber and Faber Limited, →OCLC; republished London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1960, →OCLC

Interjection

  1. (slang) Used to express strong agreement (as if encouraging somebody to continue speaking).
    • – If you can't do the time, don't do the crime! – Preach!
    Synonyms:
    church

preach meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

preach in Tamil

அறவுரை, அறவுரை கூறு

preach in Marathi

उपदेश करा

preach in Urdu

وعظ کہنا

preach in Bengali

ধর্মোপদেশ দেওয়া, প্রচার করা
More languagesFewer languages
preach in Malayalam
സദാചാരപ്രസംഗം നടത്തുക, ധർമ്മോപദേശം ചെയ്യുക, മതപ്രസംഗം നടത്തുക
preach in Kannada
ಬೋಧಿಸು bōdhisu
preach in Nepali
प्रचार गर्नुहोस्
preach in Arabic
خَطَبَ ḵaṭaba, وَعَظَ waʕaẓa, كَرَزَ karaza

Examples of preach in a sentence

  • The pastor preached that even the least of God’s creatures deserves freedom from needless or idle cruelty.
  • Jamie's always preaching about how we need to save a planet when she drives literally everywhere she goes. Like, hypocritical much?
  • You need to practise what you preach.

All 40 example sentences with preach

Synonyms of preach

Forms of preach

Verb
third-person singular presentpreaches
present participlepreaching
past participlepreached
pastpreached
past participle (nonstandard)praught
past (nonstandard)praught
Noun
pluralpreaches

Past tense of preach: preached

Origin of preach

From Middle English prechen, from Old French prëechier, precchier (Modern French prêcher), from Latin praedicō (“to proclaim, announce”, literally “to fore-assign, pre-dedicate”). Doublet of predicate. The Latin word is also the source of Old English predician (“to preach”), Saterland Frisian preetje (“to preach”), West Frisian preekje (“to preach”), Dutch preken (“to preach”), German Low German preken (“to preach”), German predigen (“to preach”), Danish prædike (“to preach”), Swedish predika (“to preach”), Icelandic prédika (“to preach”), Norwegian Nynorsk preika (“to preach”).

Words formed from preach

Words that rhyme with preach

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about preach

What does preach mean?
Preach means to give a sermon.
What is preach in Tamil?
Preach in Tamil is அறவுரை, அறவுரை கூறு. See Preach meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is preach?
Preach can be a verb, a noun or an interjection.
How do you pronounce preach?
Preach is pronounced /pɹiːt͡ʃ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of preach?
The past tense of preach is preached.

Words near preach in the dictionary

  1. preaces
  2. preacetabular
  3. preacetylated
  4. preacetylation
  5. preacetylations
  6. preach
  7. preach down
  8. preach in the desert
  9. preach to deaf ears
  10. preach to the choir
  11. preach to the congregation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preach (page history and authors); preach (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); preach (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); preach (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); preach (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); preach (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ಬೋಧಿಸು (Kannada) (page history and authors); preach (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-preach.wav.

Cite this entry: “preach.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preach. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.