Primary
''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.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter IX, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 188: ↩
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: ↩
1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic : ↩
Secondary
• • •