expostulation

English[edit]

From Latin expostulātiōnem, accusative singular of expostulātiō (“complaint, expostulation”), from expostulō (“demand, expostulate”), from ex (“out of, from”) + postulō (“demand or claim”). See expostulate.

expostulation (countable and uncountable, plural expostulations)

The act of reasoning earnestly in order to dissuade or remonstrate.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 4, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
  At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt […]
- 1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:
  The official declined to listen to any expostulations.