Definition
A diatribe is a forceful and bitter verbal or written attack against someone or something. It is usually an angry or critical speech, a long and harsh written or spoken expression of disapproval, or a vehement verbal denunciation.
Pronunciation
US English
UK English
See Synonyms, Antonyms and Usage
Excerpts from News Articles
1
On Tuesday night, much of Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show was a deeply disturbing diatribe targeting trans people, painting them as terroristic anti-Christs, afforded special privileges by the elite. “The people in charge despise working-class whites, but they venerate the trans community,” Carlson said.
2
Setting parents against teachers and politicians against scientists, Flesch’s diatribe launched a series of bitter “reading wars” that would continue for decades. They still flare up every so often to this day. Arising at much the same time, these two challenges created a severe crisis for the science of reading and its pedagogic applications.
3
In practice, defriending can range from silently ghosting old friends to more overt acts, such as Dilbert creator Scott Adams’ racist diatribe exhorting white Americans to defriend Black Americans.
4
The piece of uselessness that most captivated me, as I pretended to help tidy up at the back when an undergraduate, was a pamphlet entitled ‘DID JESUS COME TO BRITAIN?’. The question was answered in the very first word of the long diatribe that followed, which was an emphatic, capitalised ‘YES’. Even among the collection of publications advocating zany ideas and seemingly lost causes that make up this sort of church clutter, this one stood out as particularly loopy. Obviously it became my favourite.
5
Final works: A King in New York and A Countess from Hong Kong Chaplin made use of his own experiences as a victim of McCarthyism in his next film, the British-made A King in New York (1957). Satirizing the very witch hunts that had sent him into self-imposed exile, Chaplin fashioned a diatribe against the foibles of 1950s America that only occasionally managed to nail its target.
6
John Horgan’s controversial diatribe against self-congratulating sceptics is an enjoyable rant by a famous science writer on his blog.
7
I said it was a laugh and that I would be eating, smoking, or drinking anyway, and if they started fining us for dancing, I’d write a novel about Queensland turning into a revenue raising quasi-religious state. That did not make it on TV, but a short bit of my diatribe did, when I said, ‘Who cares? Very few people will be bothered to follow these rules.’ .
8
Vladlen Tatarsky, a convicted criminal turned popular pro-Russian blogger who published warmongering diatribes , was promoting his upcoming book to a gathering of his fans at a hip burger joint in St. Petersburg. A portrait of Tatarsky surrounded by firearms in the shape of angel wings lit up the room.
