1 to give a religious talk in a public place, especially in a church during a service:
[V] She preached to the congregation about forgiveness. * [VN] The minister preached a sermon on the parable of the lost sheep.
2 to tell people about a particular religion, way of life, system, etc. in order to persuade them to accept it:
[VN] to preach the word of God * He preached the virtues of capitalism to us. * [V] She preached about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
3 [V] (disapproving) to give sb advice on morals, behaviour, etc., especially in a way that they find annoying or boring:
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to preach. * You're preaching at me again!
IDIOMS
preach to the converted to speak to people in support of views that they already hold
moreatPRACTISE
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for preach is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is preach a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, preach is tagged as verb.
Does preach appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — preach appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.