Definition of "sermon"

sermon¹

/ˈsɜː.mən/

noun
plural sermons
1. Religious discourse; a written or spoken address on a religious or moral matter.
  Quotations
  One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.
  1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter III, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
2. A lengthy speech of reproval.

sermon²

verb
third-person singular simple present sermons, present participle sermoning, simple past and past participle sermoned
1. (poetic, obsolete) To discourse to or of, as in a sermon.
  Quotations
  To some I know this methode will seem displeasaunt, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then thus clowdily enwrapped in allegorical devises
  January 23 1583, Edmund Spenser, letter to Walter Raleigh
2. (poetic, obsolete) To tutor; to lecture.
  Quotations
  Come, sermon me no further.
  c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene ii], line 177