discourse

1. 1

   Verbal exchange, conversation.archaicuncountable

   • UUho when he ſhal embrace you in his arms UUil tell how many thouſand men he ſlew. And when you looke for amorous diſcourſe, Will rattle foorth his facts of war and blood: […]
2. 2

   Expression in words, either speech or writing.uncountable

   • Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: Th
3. 3

   A conversation.countable

   • It ſeems, the Minds of theſe People are ſo taken up with intenſe Speculations, that they neither can ſpeak, nor attend to the Diſcourſes of others, without being rouzed by ſome external Taction upon the Organs of Speech and Hearing; for whi
4. 4

   A formal lengthy exposition of some subject, either spoken or written.countable

   • The preacher gave us a long discourse on duty.
5. 5

   Any rational expression, reason.countable

   • Sure he that made us with such large discourse, / Looking before and after, gave us not / That capability and godlike reason / To rust in us unused.
   • difficult, strange, and harsh to the discourses of natural reason
6. 6

   An institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic (after Michel Foucault).countable

   • Furthermore, it should be recalled from the previous chapter that criminological discourse of the 1930s deemed every woman a potential criminal, implicitly including the domestic woman.
   • But equally important to the emergence of uniquely African-American queer discourses is the refusal of African-American movements for liberation to address adequately issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.
7. 7

   Lengthy, often heated debate over controversial subject matter, particularly within fandom and activist spaces. Sometimes rendered as a proper noun with the definite article (i.e. "the Discourse").Internetuncountable

   • We all know — or know now — the Internet meme known as “The Discourse,” which became popular on the social media site Tumblr in April of last year.
   • Nobody will ever know if Gene Roddenberry would hate DS9 had he lived to see it, but the controversy was patient zero for the arguments that define modern Star Trek discourse.
8. 8

   Dealing; transaction.countableobsoleteuncountable

   • Good Captain Bessus, tell us the discourse / Betwixt Tigranes and our king, and how / We got the victory.

syn. norm · Overton window