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A philippic is a strong, angry speech that attacks someone in public — not a quiet complaint, but a blasting, often long attack, usually aimed at a person in power. The word is literary and rather rare. You find it in newspapers, history books, and political writing, not in everyday talk; most people would just say a fierce attack or a speech. It comes from the speeches the Greek orator Demosthenes made against King Philip of Macedon in the 300s BC. Those speeches became so famous that later writers called any speech of that kind a philippic. Cicero later wrote his own ‘Philippics’ against Mark Antony, which helped the word travel into Latin and then English. It is a heavy, slightly word, and using it already hints that the speech was over the top.
痛斥的公開演說；猛烈抨擊的長篇攻擊
組成From Latin philippicus, from Ancient Greek philippikós ‘about Philip’, from Phílippos (the name), from phílos ‘loving’ + híppos ‘horse’. The English word is about those attacking speeches, not about horses.
同家族的字
- Philipthe speeches were named after King Philip of Macedon; the name is the same stem
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
philippicnoun/fɪˈlɪpɪk/
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Any of the discourses of Demosthenes against Philip II of Macedon, defending the liberty of Athens.
- […] the Bema, from whence Demosthenes thundered his philippics and fired the wavering patriotism of his countrymen.
- 2
Any tirade or declamation full of bitter condemnation.
- Mrs. Ferrars looked exceedingly angry, and drawing herself up more stiffly than ever, pronounced in retort this bitter phillipic; “Miss Morton is Lord Morton’s daughter.”
- "Sir Robert Akhurst is a good man, a very good man, notwithstanding his philippic; but he is an old one, which makes all the difference."
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。