What's the difference between declaim and reclaim?

Declaim


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To speak rhetorically; to make a formal speech or oration; to harangue; specifically, to recite a speech, poem, etc., in public as a rhetorical exercise; to practice public speaking; as, the students declaim twice a week.
  • (v. i.) To speak for rhetorical display; to speak pompously, noisily, or theatrically; to make an empty speech; to rehearse trite arguments in debate; to rant.
  • (v. t.) To utter in public; to deliver in a rhetorical or set manner.
  • (v. t.) To defend by declamation; to advocate loudly.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Click to view The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie makes a surprise appearance on Beyoncé's latest album , released on iTunes this morning, declaiming: "We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.
  • (2) He’s not just a straight-talker, he’s a man who reliably says the things politicians dream their opponents will be caught muttering within range of forgotten radio-mics – except he declaims them on a podium in front of thousands.
  • (3) The charge sheet was stunning: "He has corrupted his hands and sullied his government with bribes," declaimed Burke in his opening speech to the hearing.
  • (4) Favourite lines are a very personal affair, but members of my family are liable to declaim "I must have a charcoal biscuit, which is good for me", "Nothing grows in our garden, only washing", "Here's your arsenic, dear," or "Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?"
  • (5) 1976’s awesome Station to Station found him in Wagnerian mode, imperiously gazing over mountains and oceans, declaiming “the European canon is here” while “driving like a demon” between the stations (sephiroth) of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, “from Kether to Malkuth”.
  • (6) They get drunk, they go punting on the canals, they recite passages from Shakespeare, they declaim lines from Chaucer to dismayed cows, who wonder where all of this is leading.
  • (7) His letters and journals - many written with an eye towards publication - vividly conjure the life and times of an inimitable self-dramatiser ("Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life - and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other," he declaimed).
  • (8) When I Google the phrase I get Burberry's website, so I try 'British values' and the first entry is Tony Blair declaiming the 'core British values of fair play, creativity, tolerance and an outward-looking approach to the world'.
  • (9) Thomas stretches out his sentences into great, rolling, relentless waves, or crushes words together into compound coinages as the voices whisper and declaim: the play is bawdy, tragic, lyrical, sly, odd, familiar, broad and deep by turns.
  • (10) An MA graduate who can speak fluent English but who prefers to declaim in Gujarati or Hindi as he did in London last night, Mr Modi is technically savvy, and usually answers his own email.
  • (11) "It was the night before New Year's … " he declaims over an icy RZA production.
  • (12) Arena's main soliloquy is breathtaking: wearing a face-painted mask of kaleidoscopic colours and in drag (a red dress), his character declaims a kind of manifesto: "I wish to live in the drama of schism, of division … Live for a different idea, cultivate love for another possibility unforeseen, full of attraction and danger, necessary, inevitable, fatal... " Written by Punzo, made rhetorical by Arena, who speaks his lines with a mixture of mockery and defiance, across a range of facial expression that excites as much as it discomforts.
  • (13) So I wasn't surprised to read in Simon Callow's Charles Dickens and The Great Theatre of The World , that the author used to declaim passages aloud to his family after he'd written them.
  • (14) They will be playing to different galleries, declaiming their positions to their peers in the chamber, but also to domestic audiences.
  • (15) Thus declaimed Apple marketing boss "Big" Phil Schiller as he provided a rare sneak peak of a forthcoming Apple product: the new Mac Pro.
  • (16) On the higher end of the cultural scale, V declaims Shakespeare, and in honour of Guy Fawkes's subversion in the age of James I, reels off lots of Macbeth.
  • (17) • Readers who have found themselves persuaded this week by the measured insights of Ukip donor Demetri Marchessini, who purchased an ad in the Daily Telegraph to declaim on the subject of homosexuality ("there is no such word as 'homophobic', it cannot be found in any dictionary") are no doubt anxious to hear more from the Greek businessman and self-styled polemicist.
  • (18) I think, retrospectively, all this should have been declaimed in French.
  • (19) Oh you terrorists, you will be defeated, defeated, defeated!” the presenter declaimed.
  • (20) The introduction still packs an emotional punch as it declaims: “Those of us who lived those unique and unforgettable days, days destined to light up the history of the world, will never lose the memory of them.” Behind the counter, Carmen is the current custodian of those memories.

Reclaim


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To claim back; to demand the return of as a right; to attempt to recover possession of.
  • (v. t.) To call back, as a hawk to the wrist in falconry, by a certain customary call.
  • (v. t.) To call back from flight or disorderly action; to call to, for the purpose of subduing or quieting.
  • (v. t.) To reduce from a wild to a tamed state; to bring under discipline; -- said especially of birds trained for the chase, but also of other animals.
  • (v. t.) Hence: To reduce to a desired state by discipline, labor, cultivation, or the like; to rescue from being wild, desert, waste, submerged, or the like; as, to reclaim wild land, overflowed land, etc.
  • (v. t.) To call back to rectitude from moral wandering or transgression; to draw back to correct deportment or course of life; to reform.
  • (v. t.) To correct; to reform; -- said of things.
  • (v. t.) To exclaim against; to gainsay.
  • (v. i.) To cry out in opposition or contradiction; to exclaim against anything; to contradict; to take exceptions.
  • (v. i.) To bring anyone back from evil courses; to reform.
  • (v. i.) To draw back; to give way.
  • (n.) The act of reclaiming, or the state of being reclaimed; reclamation; recovery.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Some women attended the protest wearing jeans and T-shirts, while others took the mission of reclaiming the word "slut" – one of the stated objectives of the movement – more literally and turned out in overtly provocative fishnets and stilettos.
  • (2) The Guardian recently revealed that the Danish government had been forced, on the eve of the Copenhagen summit , to rush through an emergency law making it impossible for criminal gangs to reclaim huge amounts of VAT on fraudulent trades they were making on Europe's various carbon exchanges.
  • (3) The unremitting assault on Aleppo by Russian and Syrian forces over recent days is certainly testament to that.” In a week of what residents have described as the worst airstrike campaign since the start of the civil war in Syria , forces loyal to Assad have begun the early stages of a ground offensive aimed at reclaiming eastern Aleppo, which has been under opposition control since 2012.
  • (4) On Saturday morning in Adelaide, someone put the finishing touches to their “all girls must finish kindy before marriage” sign; a woman donned her cow suit painted with the message “don’t halal me”; and the Australia First Party stacked their “Multiculturalism Means Death” flyers before joining a thousand other Reclaim Australia supporters in Elder Park.
  • (5) There is also the question of which political party Reclaim will throw its support behind.
  • (6) There have been succession of schisms which have left Reclaim Australia without anyone clearly in charge, and there were relatively small numbers at the most recent rallies which, at least in larger cities, were outnumbered by counter-protesters.
  • (7) The truth of the redemption of all things in Christ, which is the message of the life-giving cross, must be reclaimed (Colossians 1:20; John 3:16).
  • (8) In practice, the individual executive will pay all expenses incurred – personal and business – and then reclaim the business expenses from the bank.” It said the bank had been “returned to financial health” in the past five years.
  • (9) He said: “Fifa remains committed to the reform process, which is critical to reclaiming public trust.
  • (10) But Rubio’s Pac, Reclaim America, hopes to benefit from wealthy individual donors including the Miami car dealer Norman Braman, the former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, who is believed to have pledged at least $10m.
  • (11) "Owning" the ageing process instead of fighting it makes it easier to value our older selves, and reclaim – both individually and together – a sense of the lifecycle.
  • (12) That centre ground is a true and positive Euroscepticism and it is essential to reclaim it.
  • (13) Police used capsicum spray in the protests that saw UPF, Reclaim Australia , Rally Against Racism and United Against Islamophobia holding separate protests and clashing with each other.
  • (14) The past year has also witnessed the rise of ultra rightwing movements such as Reclaim Australia and the Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA), the local offshoot of a party inspired by the Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders.
  • (15) Boyling used the name Jim Sutton between 1995 and 2000 in the campaign Reclaim the Streets, which organised nonviolent protests against cars, such as blocking roads and holding street parties.
  • (16) Later, I go to nearby Eden for the opening night of Reclaim the Dancefloor.
  • (17) There is nothing in this list of principles which supports labels such as “racists” and “bigots” – the labels which are so quickly attributed to Reclaim Australia’s supporters.
  • (18) Six months after closing down the News of the World, he bids to reclaim at least 2 million of his Sunday readers with a seventh-day Sun, to "build on the Sun's proud heritage".
  • (19) Without the leftist counter-demonstration on Easter Saturday, it is unlikely that the Reclaim Australia protesters would have obtained significant attention.
  • (20) Most importantly, the idea of a fringe distant from the mainstream obscures the complex ideological and organisational links between movements like Reclaim and mainstream politics.