[a. Fr. éloge, ad. L. ēlogium (see ELOGIUM). Now treated as Fr.: pronounced (eloʓ).]
† 1. An expression of praise or commendation; an encomium. Obs.
c. 1566. Nuce, trans. Seneca’s Octavia, I. iii. That woman wight shal have alwaye This eloge yet.
1693. J. Beaumont, On Burnet’s Th. Earth, I. 55. The Author here gives us an Eloge on Mountains.
1764. Wilkes, Corr. (1805), III. 128. The eloge which the noblest of poets gives me.
a. 1789. Burney, Hist. Mus., III. iv. 287. Pere Mersenne … has given us an … eloge of him.
1802. Edin. Rev., I. 23. The latter member of this eloge would now be wholly unintelligible, if applied to a spirited coach-horse.
2. A funeral oration; a discourse in honor of a deceased person, e.g., that pronounced by a newly elected member of the French Academy upon his predecessor.
c. 1725. Atterbury, Epist. Corr., I. (1783), 179. I return you, Sir, the two eloges, which I have perused with pleasure. I borrow that word from your language.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., The secretary of the royal academy of sciences in Paris composes the eloges of such members as die.
1861. G. Wilson & Geikie, E. Forbes, xv. 553. Pronouncing the Eloge of his old master into whose place he now ascends!
