speaking ill of
speaking ill of is the present participle and gerund of speak ill of.
Meaning of speak ill of
Verb
speak ill of (third-person singular simple present speaks ill of, present participle speaking ill of, simple past spoke ill of, past participle spoken ill of)
- To vilify; to defame; to criticize.
- Jimmy Carter was the first former president to speak ill of a sitting president while on foreign soil2010 March, R Emmett Tyrrell Jr, “The Lost Liberals”, in American Spectator, volume 43, number 2, page 70
- Synonyms:
- demonize, denigrate, talk shit, assassinate, asperse, backbite, badmouth, befoul, belibel, besmirch
- Antonyms:
- speak well of, brush up to, collogue, flatter, flatterize, glaver, gloze, jolly, lay it on thick, make fair weather
Questions about speaking ill of
- What is speaking ill of the present participle and gerund of?
- Speaking ill of is the present participle and gerund of speak ill of.
Words near speaking ill of in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: speaking ill of (page history and authors); speak ill of (page history and authors). 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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