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If you want to add a little oomph to your urge in speech or writing—and formal oomph at that—we exhort you to try using exhort as a synonym instead. Arriving in the 15th century from the Anglo-French word exorter, exhort traces back further to the Latin verb hortari, meaning “to incite to action, urge on, or encourage.” Latin users added the prefix ex- to hortari to intensify it; in essence, exhortari is a succinct way of saying “to really, really urge.” The Latin words adhortari (its meaning similar to that of exhortari) and dehortari (“to dissuade”) also found their way into English as adhort and dehort, respectively, but neither of these remains in current use.
Synonyms
Examples of exhort in a Sentence
Jerry McDonald, The Mercury News, 28 Oct. 2024
On Tuesday, Harris is scheduled to speak at the Ellipse in Washington, the site where Trump exhorted a crowd of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, to march on the Capitol in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
—David Lauter, Los Angeles Times, 26 Oct. 2024
Washington has exhorted its European and Asian allies to carry more weight for years and has been met mostly with shrugs and excuses.
—Ivo Daalder, Foreign Affairs, 30 Sep. 2018
On an August day in 2011, a man stood outside City Hall in Newark, New Jersey, exhorting a crowd through a wireless microphone.
—Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for exhort 
Dictionary Entries Near exhort
Cite this Entry
“Exhort.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exhort. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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