sb. [a. mod.F. tirade (16th c.) a draught, pull, shot; a long speech, declamation; passage of prose or verse, stanza, paragraph; ad. It. tirata a volley, etc., f. pa. pple. of tirare to draw, etc. (cf. TIRE sb.3): see -ADE.]
1. A volley of words; a long and vehement speech on some subject; a declamation; a protracted harangue, esp. of denunciation, abuse, or invective.
1801. Mar. Edgeworth, Angelina, iv. ‘Another cup of tea…,’ said Miss Hodges, when she had finished her tirade.
1809. Han. More, Cœlebs, II. 236. A fine high-sounding tirade, Charles, spoken con amore.
1818. Cobbett, Pol. Reg., XXXIII. 115. Let him hear this debate, these tirades of infamous falsehoods.
1823. Scott, Quentin D., xxiii. She listened with a melancholy smile to her guide’s tirade in praise of liberty.
1858. Doran, Crt. Fools, 27. Tirades of bombastic nonsense.
1874. Green, Short Hist., vi. § 4. 306. The King had … to impose silence on the tirades which were delivered from the University pulpit.
1899. E. W. Gosse, Donne, I. 131. The preface is a curious tirade.
2. spec. A passage or section of verse, of varying length, treating of a single theme or idea.
1878. Hueffer, Troubadours, 250, note. The poem is written in tirades, or paragraphs of varying lengths, bound together by the same rhyme.
1879. Saintsbury, in Encycl. Brit., IX. 638/1. The lines [in the chansons de gestes] are arranged, not in couplets or in stanzas of equal length, but in laisses or tirades, consisting of any number of lines from half a dozen to some hundreds…. Sometimes the tirade is completed by a shorter line.
1900. G. Santayana, Poetry & Relig., 257. Euphuism contributes not a little to the poetic effect of the tirades of Keats and Shelley; if we wish to see the power of versification without euphuism we may turn to the tirades of Pope.
1901. J. Hall, K. Horn, p. li. The poem extends to 5,250 alexandrines rhymed in tirades.
3. Mus. (See quot.)
1876. Stainer & Barrett, Dict. Mus. Terms, Tirade, the filling up of an interval between two notes with a run, in vocal or instrumental music.
Hence Tirade v., intr. to utter or write a tirade; to inveigh or declaim vehemently.
1871. R. B. Vaughan, St. Thomas Aquinas, II. 683, note. They tirade against the influence of dogma.
1905. Westm. Gaz., 16 Jan., 2/1. The papers tirade against England.
1907. J. F. Fraser, in Standard, 13 March. A Welsh member tiraded on what the Welsh Church Commission should not do.
