orate, v.
(ˈɔəreɪt, ɒˈreɪt)
[f. L. orāt-, ppl. stem of ōrāre to speak, plead, pray.
This word is occasionally instanced since c 1600, but has only recently come into more common use, as a back-formation from oration, app. first in U.S. c 1860; in Dictionaries it is recorded in Webster Supp. (1879).]
1. intr. † a. To pray; to plead. Obs. b. To deliver an oration; to act the orator; to hold forth, ‘speechify’. Now usually humorous or sarcastic.
| c 1600 Timon ii. iv. (1842) 32 O let it bee lawfull for mee..to orate and exorate. 1669 Gale Crt. Gentiles i. Introd. 4 A Rhetorician, whose businesse is to orate and persuade. 1780 Town & Country Mag. June 294/1 Four actresses, who..obtained better salaries for orating at Carlisle-house. 1828 Southey Ess. (1832) II. 269 Write, and orate, and legislate as we will upon the principles of free trade. 1864 Sala in Daily Tel. 18 Nov., General Banks..has been ‘orating’ in New York. 1876 C. M. Davies Unorth. Lond. (ed. 2) 430, I..passed on, and left him orating. a 1881 J. L. Diman in C. Hazard Mem. xi. (1887) 231 Last week I went to Andover and repeated my address, and next week do the same at Burlington; so you see my time this summer is much taken up with ‘orating’. |
2. trans. To address in a harangue. rare.
| 1885 W. Rye Hist. Norfolk v. 71 A turbaned boy on a platform orated her for the fourth time. |