verb. (colloquial).—To moralise out of season; TO CANT (q.v.): as subs.—(1) a sermon; and (2) canting talk. Hence PREACHING-SHOP = a church (or chapel); PREACHIFYING = tiresome moralising; PREACHY-PREACHY = long-windedly moral; PREACHMAN = a clergyman; PREACHMENT = affectedly solemn cackle.
1592. MARLOWE, Edward the Second, iv. 6. Rice. Come, come, keep these PREACHMENTS till you come to the place anointed.
1595. SHAKESPEARE, 3 Henry VI., i. 4.
| Was’t you that revell’d in our parliament, | |
| And made a PREACHMENT of your high descent? |
1597. HOOKER, Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 28. No Sermon, no Service. Which over-sight occasioned the French spitefully to term Religion, in that sort exercised, a meer PREACH.
1644–5. HOWELL, Familiar Letters, II. 33. Some of our PREACHMEN are grown dog-mad.
1795. BURNS, Spoken at the Theatre, Dumfries [Century].
| Old Father Time deputes me here before ye, | |
| Not for to PREACH, but tell his simple story. |
1822. DOUGLAS JERROLD, Black Ey’d Susan, i. 2. Tut! if you are inclined to PREACH, here is a mile-stone—I’ll leave you in its company.
1847. THACKERAY, Vanity Fair, I. x. ‘Shut up your sarmons, Pitt, when Miss Crawley comes down,’ said his father; ‘she has written to say that she won’t stand the PREACHIFYING.’
| Ibid. (18[?]), Ballads of Policeman X (A Woful New Ballad of the Protestant Conspiracy to Take the Pope’s Life). | |
| And them benighted Protestants, on Sunday they must go | |
| Outside the town to the PREACHING-SHOP by the gate of Popolo. |
1889. Academy, 19 Oct., 260. She has the art of making her typical good women real and attractive … never … prudish or PREACHY.
1894. GEORGE MOORE, Esther Waters, xvii. I don’t ’old with all them PREACHY-PREACHY brethren says about the theatre.
TO PREACH AT TYBURN-CROSS, verb. phr. (old).—To be hanged: see LADDER.
