''expostulation'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904104805-00-⌔

expostulation - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

expostulation (countable and uncountable, plural expostulations)

• The act of reasoning earnestly in order to dissuade or remonstrate.
  • ✤ [H]eedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained calling, at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright.¹
  • ✤ At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt […]²
  • ✤ The official declined to listen to any expostulations.³

Etymology

From Latin expostulātiōnem, accusative singular of expostulātiō (“complaint, expostulation”), from expostulō (“demand, expostulate”), from ex (“out of, from”) + postulō (“demand or claim”). See expostulate.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

1. 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter IX, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 188: ↩

2. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 4, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC: ↩

3. 1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩