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Allin

denounce

verbattested in dialogue

  • //diˈnaʊns//
  • //dəˈnaʊns//

To criticize or speak out against (someone or something); to point out as deserving of reprehension, etc.; to openly accuse or condemn in a threatening manner; to invoke censure upon; to stigmatize; to blame.

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo make known in a formal manner; to proclaim; to announce; to declare.

    Nero[…]sent his Satellites or officers toward him, to denounce the decree of his death to him[…].

    And full of peace, denouncing wrath to come

  2. 2

    To criticize or speak out against (someone or something); to point out as deserving of reprehension, etc.; to openly accuse or condemn in a threatening manner; to invoke censure upon; to stigmatize; to blame.

    to denounce someone as a swindler, or as a coward

    Mr. Cameron had a respite Thursday from the negative chatter swirling around him when he appeared outside 10 Downing Street to denounce the murder a day before of a British soldier on a London street.

    It is the latest step towards an airline-style advance booking-only system, which rail users have denounced as signalling the end of affordable, immediate travel.

  3. 3

    To make a formal or public accusation against; to inform against; to accuse.

    to denounce a confederate in crime

    to denounce someone to the authorities

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo proclaim in a threatening manner; to threaten by some outward sign or expression; make a menace of.

    to denounce war; to denounce punishment

  5. 5

    To announce the termination of; especially a treaty or armistice.

    It would be possible to “denounce” (leave) the Convention altogether, but short of that, legislation to restore the death penalty would place the UK government in breach of its treaty obligations under the ECHR; it would breach international law.

    A Contracting State may denounce this Convention, or Part II or Part III of the Convention, by a formal notification in writing addressed to the depositary.

  6. 6

    historicalTo claim the right of working a mine that is abandoned or insufficiently worked.

Etymology

From Old French denuncier, from Latin dēnūntiō (“to announce, to denounce, to threaten”), from de + nūntiō (“to announce, to report, to denounce”), from nūntius (“messenger, message”). Doublet of denunciate.

Forms

past tense
denounced
past participle
denounced
present participle
denouncing
third person singular
denounces
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).