What's the difference between pontificate and speak?

Pontificate


Definition:

  • (n.) The state or dignity of a high priest; specifically, the office of the pope.
  • (n.) The term of office of a pontiff.
  • (v. i.) To perform the duty of a pontiff.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Highlighting an excerpt of the interview, which Harri claimed was "implying the mayor is 'losing his touch' because he 'failed' to upstage the PM", he criticised the decision to allow Purnell to "pontificate without challenge, qualification or allowing us a right to reply" and described the author as someone who "knows no one in No 10".
  • (2) RDE: I wouldn't expect the head of Oxfam to subsist on gruel, but I'd like charity workers to see their jobs as vocations rather than a well-paid career providing both generous financial rewards and the opportunity to pontificate from the moral high ground.
  • (3) The group’s trip to Rome is designed to coincide with a workshop hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Tuesday called Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity, which will feature speeches by Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs.
  • (4) If she genuinely can't understand that, there is little point her pontificating on any of the minutiae of the free market system nor the political or economic world at large.
  • (5) But in a setback, the US embassy found that its closest ally on GM, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the powerful Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the man who mostly represents the pope at the United Nations, had withdrawn his support for the US.
  • (6) The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel's onslaught on Gaza, you'd think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power.
  • (7) Emilio Sáenz-Francés, professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, says Spain will suffer internally and externally as long as the political paralysis endures.
  • (8) Prime among these is Katie Hopkins, a former Apprentice contestant who now writes a column for the Sun and pontificates on daytime TV, appearing on the This Morning sofa as regularly as an untreated cold sore.
  • (9) In one of the longest, most passionate and sweeping speeches of his pontificate, the Argentine-born pope used his visit to Bolivia to ask forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic church in its treatment of native Americans during what he called the “so-called conquest of America”.
  • (10) Emilio Sáenz-Francés, a professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, said that while the central government may have succeeded in watering down Sunday’s vote, it had done little to address the underlying grassroots movement pushing for independence.
  • (11) The meeting was arranged by the Argentine head of the pontifical academy, Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, a good friend of the pope’s.
  • (12) I’m here to talk about trade not to pontificate on other issues.
  • (13) But she says now that she'd been doing interviews all day, "then somehow, I started liking the sound of my own voice pontificating.
  • (14) But Guzmán Carriquiry, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and a friend of the pope’s, suggested at a recent conference in Philadelphia that the pope would try to present a more nuanced understanding of the US, including in his discussion of economics.
  • (15) But she thought it might also indicate that the Vatican "may ... be pulling back due to concerns about ITF pressure to declassify records from the WWII-era pontificate of Pope Pius XII".
  • (16) The 77-year-old former archbishop of Buenos Aires will be the fifth pope to meet the Queen, who first visited the Vatican as Princess Elizabeth during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
  • (17) Any commentator who speaks of “Ireland” (26 counties thereof) gaining “independence” (sic) whole ignoring the fact that almost one million of its citizens are now trapped in a gerrymandered United Kingdom statelet in which they want no part of, nor ever wanted, shouldn’t be pontificating on Scottish independence .
  • (18) Fourteen-year-olds pontificating on this must be making the old field marshal turn in his grave, and this debate also perpetuates the myth that British soldiers were "lions led by donkeys", the idea that the brave ordinary Tommy was let down by the brandy-soaked toffs in charge.
  • (19) The big bang, which is today posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creation; rather, it requires it,” the pope said in an address to a meeting at the pontifical academy of sciences.
  • (20) The crowd of excitable young and young-ish people gathered to hear him pontificate believe what he’s saying, even if he doesn’t.

Speak


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To utter words or articulate sounds, as human beings; to express thoughts by words; as, the organs may be so obstructed that a man may not be able to speak.
  • (v. i.) To express opinions; to say; to talk; to converse.
  • (v. i.) To utter a speech, discourse, or harangue; to adress a public assembly formally.
  • (v. i.) To discourse; to make mention; to tell.
  • (v. i.) To give sound; to sound.
  • (v. i.) To convey sentiments, ideas, or intelligence as if by utterance; as, features that speak of self-will.
  • (v. t.) To utter with the mouth; to pronounce; to utter articulately, as human beings.
  • (v. t.) To utter in a word or words; to say; to tell; to declare orally; as, to speak the truth; to speak sense.
  • (v. t.) To declare; to proclaim; to publish; to make known; to exhibit; to express in any way.
  • (v. t.) To talk or converse in; to utter or pronounce, as in conversation; as, to speak Latin.
  • (v. t.) To address; to accost; to speak to.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But when he speaks, the crowds who have come together to make a stand against government corruption and soaring fuel prices cheer wildly.
  • (2) Whittingdale also defended the right of MPs to use privilege to speak out on public interest matters.
  • (3) The cause has been innumerable "VIP movements", as journeys undertaken by those considered important enough for all other traffic to be held up, sometimes for hours, are described in South Asian bureaucratic speak.
  • (4) Many speak about how yoga and surfing complement each other, both involving deep concentration, flexibility and balance.
  • (5) Speaking to pro-market thinktank Reform, Milburn called for “more competition” and said the shadow health team were making a “fundamental political misjudgment” by attempting to roll back policies he had overseen.
  • (6) Speaking to a handpicked audience of community representatives, the prime minister said he had not allowed the EU to get its way.
  • (7) Technically speaking, this modality of brief psychotherapy is based on the nonuse of transferential interpretations, on impeding the regression od the patient, on facilitating a cognitice-affective development of his conflicts and thus obtain an internal object mutation which allows the transformation of the "past" into true history, and the "present" into vital perspectives.
  • (8) The distribution of cells at the stage of DNA synthesis and mitosis in all the parietal peritoneum speaks of the absence of special proliferation zones.
  • (9) Again, the boys in care that he abused now speak to us as broken adults.
  • (10) It’s the same story over and over.” Children’s author Philip Ardagh , who told the room he once worked as an “unprofessional librarian” in Lewisham, said: “Closing down a library is like filing off the end of a swordfish’s nose: pointless.” 'Speak up before there's nothing left': authors rally for National Libraries Day Read more “Today proves that support for public libraries comes from all walks of life and it’s not rocket science to work out why.
  • (11) Speaking in the BBC's Radio Theatre, Hall will emphasise the need for a better, simpler BBC, as part of efforts to streamline management.
  • (12) The ability to demonstrate selective augmentation of the functional matrix-associated receptor population, and our recent results showing that gonadotropes are indeed the responsive cells (Singh P, Muldoon TG, unpublished observations) speak to the specificity and relevance of these findings.
  • (13) Clare Gills, an American journalist and friend of Foley, wrote in 2013: “He is always striving to get to the next place, to get closer to what is really happening, and to understand what moves the people he’s speaking with.
  • (14) There is a certain degree of swagger, a sudden interruption of panache, as Alan Moore enters the rather sterile Waterstones office where he has agreed to speak to me.
  • (15) The debate certainly hit upon a larger issue: the tendency for people in positions of social and cultural power to tell the stories of minorities for them, rather than allowing minority communities to speak for themselves.
  • (16) Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, People's Liberation Army's chief of the general staff Gen Fang Fenghui also warned that the US must be objective about tensions between China and Vietnam or risk harming relations between Washington and Beijing.
  • (17) Speaking at The Carbon Show in London today, Philippe Chauvancy, director at climate exchange BlueNext, said that the announcement last week that it is to develop China's first standard for voluntary emission reduction projects alongside the government-backed China Beijing Environmental Exchange, could lay the foundations for a voluntary cap-and-trade scheme.
  • (18) "There were around 50 attackers, heavily armed in three vehicles, and they were flying the Shebab flag," Maisori added, speaking from the town, where several buildings including hotels, restaurants, banks and government offices were razed to the ground.
  • (19) Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born campaigner against religious laws, had been invited to speak to the Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists Society next month.
  • (20) A doctor the Guardian later speaks to insists it makes no sense.