Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Dissuasion; advice or counsel to the contrary of some act or undertaking.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun rare Dissuasion; advice against something.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun archaic Dissuasion; advice against something.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin dehortatio

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word dehortation.

Examples

  • Technically, Hemingway offered Dietrich a dehortation, a rarely used but quite proper English term compared to an exhortation, which attempts to persuade people to do something, a dehortation is an attempt to dissuade people from a course of action.

    'Neverisms': 11 Things You Should Never Do, Never Say, Never Forget (PHOTOS) 2011

  • From whence may be inferred, first, that exhortation and dehortation is directed to the good of him that giveth the counsel, not of him that asketh it, which is contrary to the duty of a counsellor; who, by the definition of counsel, ought to regard, not his own benefit, but his whom he adviseth.

    Leviathan 2007

  • Exhortation, and dehortation is counsel, accompanied with signs in him that giveth it of vehement desire to have it followed; or, to say it more briefly, counsel vehemently pressed.

    Leviathan 2007

  • Secondly, that the use of exhortation and dehortation lieth only where a man is to speak to a multitude, because when the speech is addressed to one, he may interrupt him and examine his reasons more rigorously than can be done in a multitude; which are too many to enter into dispute and dialogue with him that speaketh indifferently to them all at once.

    Leviathan 2007

  • So, speaking concerning it, he useth that pathetical dehortation, "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate," Jer. xliv.

    Pneumatologia 1616-1683 1967

  • We may gather from the rich abundance of motives which the Apostle suggests before he comes to present his exhortation, that he suspected the existence of some tendencies in the opposite direction in Philippi, and possibly the same conclusion may be drawn from the exuberance of the exhortation itself, and from its preceding the dehortation which follows.

    Expositions of Holy Scripture Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy. Alexander Maclaren 1868

  • In verses 31 and 32 weighty warning and dehortation follow, based in part on the preceding picture.

    Expositions of Holy Scripture Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes Alexander Maclaren 1868

  • Whether these designations be taken as referring to growth and maturity of Christian experience, or of natural age, they equally carry the lesson that no age and no stage is beyond the danger of being drawn away by the world's love, or beyond the need of the solemn dehortation therefrom.

    Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John Alexander Maclaren 1868

  • And thus much for the first thing to be considered in the dehortation; namely, the person dehorting, who was

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. III. 1634-1716 1823

  • In which we shall begin with the first general part of the text, to wit, the dehortation itself; and so confining our discourse wholly to this at present, we will consider in it these three following particulars.

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. III. 1634-1716 1823

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.