EDIFY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Edify

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ˈɛdəfˌaɪ/ Listen

verb

Edify v. i. (past & past part. edified; pres. part. edifying)

To build; to construct. (Archaic) "There was a holy chapel edified."

To instruct and improve, especially in moral and religious knowledge; to teach. "It does not appear probable that our dispute (about miracles) would either edify or enlighten the public."

To teach or persuade. (Obs.)

Edify v. i. To improve. (R.)

See images of 'Edify'

Etymology of 'Edify'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Edify" Quotes from Famous Books

... grounds; she took him at the earnest request of friends in Flekkefjord. Generally, her lodgers were spiritually minded young men, often wandering lay-preachers, who came and went, remaining a few days among the Brethren in order to exhort and edify one another. ...

— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... who rejoice Over one saved do triumph at this hour In the reborn salvation of a land So noble. [A pause. For ourselves we do protest That our commission is to heal, not harm; We come not to condemn, but reconcile; We come not to compel, but call again; We come not to destroy, but edify; Nor yet to question things already done; These are forgiven—matters of the past— And range with jetsam and with offal thrown Into the blind sea of forgetfulness. [A pause. Ye have reversed the attainder laid on us By him who sack'd ...

— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... convocation house, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster, when all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no, though Harry the Seventh himself there, with all his liege tombs about ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... much contempt of death as either Argyle or Rumbold: but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds. Though political sympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he had no religious sympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by them as little better than an atheist. He belonged to that section of the Whigs which sought for models rather among the patriots of Greece and Rome ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... cannot see, for my part, why it is much better to sing "idle words" than to say them. How vapid, how senseless, is many a song one hears from a pretty mouth and a sweet voice. And in music as elsewhere, there is no middle ground: whatever does not edify—build up—pulls down. ...

— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner

More quotes...