Wiktionary

peroration

English

edit

Etymology

edit

From Latin perōrō (“to speak at length, to conclude a speech”) (from per- (“very”) + ōrō (“to speak, to orate”) (English orate)) + -ation (“action (nominalizer)”) (from Latin -ātiō).

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

peroration (countable and uncountable, plural perorations)

  1. The concluding section of a discourse, either written or oral, in which the orator or writer sums up and commends his topic to his audience, particularly as used in the technical sense of a component of ancient Roman oratorical delivery.
    • 1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, I.20:
      This passage is virtually the peroration of the Ethics; the few paragraphs that follow are concerned with the transition to politics.
    • 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 480:
      The young man achieved perfect timing, for the last word of his peroration coincided with the muffled clap of the doors closing, after having launched the coffin onto the rails of a subterranean railway.
    • 2025 April 26, Simon Schama, “The war on knowledge”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1:
      His peroration, to which, he [JD Vance] said, he had given much thought, would feature, for his mic drop, a pearl of wisdom from “the great prophet and statesman” Richard Milhous Nixon.
  2. A discourse or rhetorical argument in general.

Derived terms

edit
edit

Translations

edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=peroration&oldid=90306368"