Sermon

How to spell sermon

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sermon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sermon mean?

1. nounA formal religious talk delivered from a pulpit, usually based on scripture.
2. nounA long, tedious piece of moralising or reproof addressed to someone.

Sermon in a sentence

• The vicar based this week's sermon on a passage from the gospels.

• Her father delivered a tiresome sermon about the dangers of overspending.

• The congregation listened quietly throughout the long sermon.

• All he wanted was advice, not another sermon about responsibility.

Where does sermon come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin sermo, with the stem sermon-, meaning 'talk', 'conversation', or 'a piece of connected discourse'. In ordinary Roman usage it simply meant everyday speech or a discussion, with no religious flavour at all. English took it up through Old French sermun in the 1100s and 1200s, by which time the church had narrowed the sense to a formal address delivered from the pulpit to teach scripture or morals. The original idea of a 'spoken discourse' survives in the modern figurative use, where any long moralising lecture can be called a sermon. The spelling kept the Latin -mon stem, which is why the ending is -on rather than the -en that the unstressed final syllable tempts writers toward.

How the word is built

• serm- (from Latin sermo: talk, discourse)
• -on (noun ending)