EDIFYING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Edifying

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/ˈɛdəfˌaɪɪŋ/ 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.)

adjective

Edifying adj. Instructing; improving; as, an edifying conversation.

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Etymology of 'Edifying'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Edifying" Quotes from Famous Books

... remark is Xenophon-Hellenic, but less edifying; fortunately it is only the penultimate, for there is the final {khairete} [good-bye] and message to his wife. Why was she not present? I suppose she was at ...

— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... some time in the gate-house of the abbey buildings, 'till my house was repaired and habitable, which then was very ruinous and all unhandsome, the wall being only of timber and plaster, and ill-contrived within: and besides the repairs, or rather re-edifying the house, I built the stable and barn, I heightened the outwalls of the court double to what they were, and made all the wall round about the paddock; so that the place hath been improved very much, both for beauty and profit, by me more than all my ancestors, for there was not a tree about the ...

— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... have been entirely wiped out as heroes of fiction by hardworking curates in the East End. The aim of most of our modern novelists seems to be, not to write good novels, but to write novels that will do good; and I am afraid that they are under the impression that fashionable life is not an edifying subject. They wish to reform the morals, rather than to portray the manners of their age. They have made the novel the mode of propaganda. It is possible, however, that Dorinda points to some coming change, and certainly it would be a pity if ...

— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... trampled on every tie of affection and pleasure. Disappearing in the narrow streets, he disappears also from the pages of our narrative until, in the extraordinary vicissitudes of time, he makes his appearance again in a scene both touching and edifying. ...

— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... rulers. So did our forefathers, and so may any people whose form of government no longer answers the end for which God has commanded civil government to be instituted. The Quakers are now a minority in all the countries in which they exist, and furnish an edifying example of submission to the laws which they can not conscientiously obey. But should they come, in any political society, to be the controlling power, it is plain they would have the right to conduct it ...

— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

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