How to use harangue in a sentence

11 example sentences · noun, verb

Harangue means an impassioned, disputatious public speech. Example: “She gave her son a harangue about the dangers of playing in the street.”

Examples of harangue by meaning

nounA tirade, harsh scolding or rant, whether spoken or written.

She gave her son a harangue about the dangers of playing in the street.
The priest took thirty minutes to deliver his harangue on timeliness, making the entire service run late.

verbTo give a forceful and lengthy lecture or criticism to someone.

The angry motorist leapt from his car to harangue the other driver.

verbTo deliver a public address to.

He is part of the landscape now—out there every Saturday night, haranguing the crowd round the soldiers’ monument, with a bronze Civil War infantryman standing guard over his head to assure him a hearing or his constitutional rights or something.1920 November 20, James H. Collins, “When Soap Box Meets Soap Box”, in The Saturday Evening Post, volume 193, number 21, page 19
It's a tradition that when you harangue the multitudes, you stand on a soapbox.1993 July 7, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (comic)

More sentences with harangue

Helder was also a visionary given to muddled, passionate harangues on immortality, astral projection and other esoterica.2002 May 20, “Luke Helder's Bad Trip”, in Time. From the entry esoterica
A group of young Jewish kids are being harangued by a group of young men.1987, Hanif Kureishi, “Int. The tube. Day”, in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid: The Script and the Diary, London: Faber and Faber, published…. From the entry yiddo
Or perhaps Hull merely rewrote Kearney's incoherent harangues, polishing their language, heightening their ferocity, after they were delivered?1997, Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California, page 11. From the entry harangues
Despite the element of coercion and a week of haranguing in the press, most subbotniki appeared to be taking their duties with good humor.1975 April 20, UPI [United Press International], “Moscow gets a spring cleaning”, in Democrat and Chronicle, 143rd year, Rochester, N.Y.…. From the entry subbotnik
From his "brass throat" poured such harangues of class hatred that his woolhat followers howled down opposing speakers and hurled clods at them.1939, Shields McIlwaine, The southern poor-white from Lubberland to Tobacco Road. From the entry woolhat
They were roughly harangued and forced to practise self-criticism: Duclos confessed to 'opportunism, legalitarianism, parliamentary illusions' and promised to 'mobilise the people of France against American imperialism'.1994, J. P. D. Dunbabin, International Relations Since 1945: A History in Two Volumes. From the entry legalitarianism

Meaning of harangue

noun An impassioned, disputatious public speech.
noun A tirade, harsh scolding or rant, whether spoken or written.
verb To give a forceful and lengthy lecture or criticism to someone.

Full definition of harangue

Questions about harangue in a sentence

How do you use harangue in a sentence?: Harangue is used as a noun and verb. For example: “She gave her son a harangue about the dangers of playing in the street.”
What is a short sentence with harangue?: “The angry motorist leapt from his car to harangue the other driver.”
What does harangue mean?: Harangue means an impassioned, disputatious public speech.

Adapted from Wiktionary: harangue (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use harangue in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/harangue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.