Word Direct Answers

What does "discourse" mean?

Discourse: Conversation; talk. In their discourses after supper. Shak. Filling the head with variety of thoughts, and the mouth with copious discourse. Locke.

Additional senses

  1. 2.The art and manner of speaking and conversing. Of excellent breeding, admirable discourse. Shak.
  2. 3.Consecutive speech, either written or unwritten, on a given line of thought; speech; treatise; dissertation; sermon, etc.; as, the preacher gave us a long discourse on duty.
  3. 4.Dealing; transaction. [Obs.] Good Captain Bessus, tell us the discourse Betwixt Tigranes and our king, and how We got the victory. Beau. & Fl.
  4. 5.To exercise reason; to employ the mind in judging and inferring; to reason. [Obs.] "Have sense or can discourse." Dryden.
  5. 6.To express one's self in oral discourse; to expose one's views; to talk in a continuous or formal manner; to hold forth; to speak; to converse. Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear. Shak.
  6. 7.To relate something; to tell. Shak.
  7. 8.To treat of something in writing and formally.
  8. 9.To treat of; to expose or set forth in language. [Obs.] The life of William Tyndale . . . is sufficiently and at large discoursed in the book. Foxe.
  9. 10.To utter or give forth; to speak. It will discourse mosShak.
  10. 11.To talk to; to confer with. [Obs.] I have spoken to my brother, who is the patron, to discourse the minister about it. Evelyn.

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