rhet·o·ri·cian

(rĕt′ə-rĭsh′ən)

1. An expert in or teacher of rhetoric.

2. An eloquent speaker or writer.

3. A person given to verbal extravagance.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

rhetorician

(ˌrɛtəˈrɪʃən)

1. (Rhetoric) a teacher of the art of rhetoric

2. a stylish or eloquent writer or speaker

3. a person whose speech is pompous or extravagant

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

rhet•o•ri•cian

(ˌrɛt əˈrɪʃ ən)

n.

1. an expert in the art of rhetoric.

2. a person who writes or speaks in an elaborate or exaggerated style.

3. a person who teaches rhetoric.

[1375–1425; late Middle English rethoricien < Middle French rethorique rhetoric + -ien -ian]

rhetorician

1. a teacher of rhetoric.
2. one skilled in the art of rhetoric.
3. a speaker who overuses rhetorical devices, especially a bombastic or overelaborate orator.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

rhetorician - a person who delivers a speech or oration

orator, public speaker, speechifier, speechmaker

eulogist, panegyrist - an orator who delivers eulogies or panegyrics

elocutionist - a public speaker trained in voice production and gesture and delivery

haranguer - a public speaker who delivers a loud or forceful or angry speech

speaker, talker, verbaliser, verbalizer, utterer - someone who expresses in language; someone who talks (especially someone who delivers a public speech or someone especially garrulous); "the speaker at commencement"; "an utterer of useful maxims"

spellbinder - an orator who can hold his listeners spellbound

tub-thumper - a noisy and vigorous or ranting public speaker

rhetorician

noun

A public speaker:

orator.

Translations

rhétoricien

rhetorician

[ˌretəˈrɪʃən] N → retórico/a m/f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

rhetorician

n → Rhetoriker(in) m(f); (pej) → Phrasendrescher(in) m(f) (pej)

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

These are, first, such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned; such as was Hermogenes the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle; who afterwards waxed stupid.

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'A rhetorician would have had much to say upon that point.' It may be observed however that Plato never intended to answer the question of casuistry, but only to exhibit the ideal of patient virtue which refuses to do the least evil in order to avoid the greatest, and to show his master maintaining in death the opinions which he had professed in his life.

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Just at this time, Pierre Abelard, who had already made himself widely famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school of rhetoric in Paris.

He answered, addressing her as his "sister in Christ." They continued to correspond, she in the unweighed language of unwavering affection, he in the chilly phraseology of the polished rhetorician. She poured out her heart in passionate, disjointed sentences; he replied with finished essays, divided deliberately into heads and sub-heads, premises and argument.

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The Prime Minister out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town.

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Sing, play--bah!--as some rhetorician once said of old Nap, competition fled from her.

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He characteristically remarks that he will not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not make a regular defence such as Lysias or one of the orators might have composed for him, or, according to some accounts, did compose for him.

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{Highlands = the Hudson Highlands, a mountainous region in Putnam and Dutchess Counties, through which the Hudson River passes in a deep and picturesque gorge; Eolus = God of the winds; Boreas = God of the North wind; Seneca = one of the Finger Lakes in central New York State; Grecian king = both the Senecas of antiquity, the rhetorician (54 BC-39 AD) and his son the philosopher/statesman (4 BC-65 AD), were, of course, Romans--in any case, Lake Seneca is named after the Seneca nation of the Iroquois Indians; Park-Place = already in 1816 a fashionable street in lower Manhattan; Chippewa = an American army defeated the British at Chippewa, in Canada near Niagara Falls, on July 5, 1814; Lawrence = Captain James ("Don't give up the ship!") Lawrence (1781-

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Planudes may have invented some few fables, or have inserted some that were current in his day; but there is an abundance of unanswerable internal evidence to prove that he had an acquaintance with the veritable fables of Aesop, although the versions he had access to were probably corrupt, as contained in the various translations and disquisitional exercises of the rhetoricians and philosophers.

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In the case of oratory, this is the function of the Political art and of the art of rhetoric: and so indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language of civic life; the poets of our time, the language of the rhetoricians. Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.

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There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia, that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious offspring of political fanaticism.

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Does writing a critical essay on printmaking make a person a rhetorician, visual or otherwise?

Hill, Charles A. and Helmers, Marguerite (Eds.). Defining Visual Rhetorics