expostulation
English
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
Noun
expostulation (countable and uncountable, plural expostulations)
- The act of reasoning earnestly in order to dissuade or remonstrate.
- 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter IX, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 188:
- [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.
- 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:
- 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 […]
- 1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic Monthly[1], Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 7 March 2026:
- The official declined to listen to any expostulations.