pulpit
pronunciation
How to pronounce pulpit in British English:
UK [ˈpʊlpɪt]
How to pronounce pulpit in American English:
US [ˈpʊlpɪt, ˈpʌl-]
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- Noun:
- a platform raised above the surrounding level to give prominence to the person on it
Word Origin
- pulpit
- pulpit: [14] Classical Latin pulpitum, a word of unknown origin, denoted ‘platform, stage’. This sense was originally carried over into English (Miles Coverdale, in his 1535 translation of II Chronicles 6:13, wrote ‘Salomon had made a brasen pulpit … upon the same stood he’, where the 1611 Authorized Version was later to have ‘Solomon had made a brasen scaffold … and upon it he stood’).But it was eventually swamped by a subsidiary sense which emerged in medieval Latin: pulpitum had been applied particularly to platforms on which people stood to speak in public, and in ecclesiastical usage it came to denote a ‘raised structure on which preachers stand’.
- pulpit (n.)
- early 14c., from Late Latin pulpitum "raised structure on which preachers stand," in classical Latin "scaffold; stage, platform for actors," of unknown origin. Also borrowed in Middle High German as pulpit (German Pult "desk"). Sense of "Christian preachers and ministers generally" is from 1560s. Pulpiteer, old contemptuous term for "professional preacher," is recorded from 1640s.
Example
- 1. But despite mr duncan 's bully pulpit , some may refuse to be bullied .
- 2. On the eve of martin luther king day , barack obama took to the pulpit to talk about race .
- 3. On stage and in the pulpit , moral dilemmas of this kind tend to have a black-and-white clarity .
- 4. So in this pulpit , on this day , let me ask all of you in your heart to say : we will honor the life and the work of martin luther king ......
- 5. The author of scores of books , the sponsor of a popular islamist website , and the star of religious programming on the arabic-language al-jazeera satellite channel , mr qaradawi takes full advantage of his scholarly stature and his bully pulpit .