English

Alternative forms

• (UK) catechise

Verb

catechize ‎(third-person singular simple present catechizes, present participle catechizing, simple past and past participle catechized)

1. To give oral instruction, especially of religion; now specifically by the formal question-and-answer method; in the Church of England, to teach the catechism as preparation for confirmation.
2. To question at length.
   • 1888, Henry James, The Modern Warning.

     She promised herself to ascertain thoroughly, after they should be comfortably settled in the ship, the animus with which the book was to be written. She was a very good sailor and she liked to talk at sea; there her husband would not be able to escape from her, and she foresaw the manner in which she should catechise him.

   • 1910, Saki, ‘The Soul of Laploshka’, Reginald in Russia:

     Putting a strong American inflection into the French which I usually talked with an unmistakeable British accent, I catechized the Baron as to the date of the church's building, its dimensions, and other details which an American tourist would be certain to want to know.

Translations