denounce

From Old French denuncier, from Latin dēnūntiō (“to announce, to denounce, to threaten”), from de + nūntiō (“to announce, to report, to denounce”), from nūntius (“messenger, message”)

• IPA^(key): /diˈnaʊns/, /dəˈnaʊns/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊns

denounce (third-person singular simple present denounces, present participle denouncing, simple past and past participle denounced)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To make known in a formal manner; to proclaim; to announce; to declare.
   • 1603, John Florio, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, chapter 35, in The Essayes, […], book II, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

     Nero […] sent his Satellites or officers toward him, to denounce the decree of his death to him […].

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost:

     And full of peace, denouncing wrath to come

2. (transitive) To criticize or speak out against (someone or something); to point out as deserving of reprehension, etc.; to openly accuse or condemn in a threatening manner; to invoke censure upon; to stigmatize; to blame.

   to denounce someone as a swindler, or as a coward

   • 2013 May 23, Sarah Lyall, "British Leader’s Liberal Turn Sets Off a Rebellion in His Party," New York Times (retrieved 29 May 2013):

     Mr. Cameron had a respite Thursday from the negative chatter swirling around him when he appeared outside 10 Downing Street to denounce the murder a day before of a British soldier on a London street.

3. (transitive) To make a formal or public accusation against; to inform against; to accuse.

   to denounce a confederate in crime

   to denounce someone to the authorities

4. (transitive, obsolete) To proclaim in a threatening manner; to threaten by some outward sign or expression; make a menace of.

   to denounce war; to denounce punishment

5. (transitive) To announce the termination of; especially a treaty or armistice.
6. (US, historical) To claim the right of working a mine that is abandoned or insufficiently worked.

• attack, charge, condemn, criticize, damn, decry, discredit, inveigh against, proscribe, report

• denunciate

• denouncement
• denouncer

• announce
• enounce
• pronounce
• renounce

• denounce in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• denounce in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• enounced, unencode