The first step we are going to take, before discovering the meaning of the term diatribe, is to know its etymological origin. In this case, we can state that it is a word that derives from Greek and that it is the result of the sum of two components of that language:
-The prefix “dia-”, which is used to indicate “through”.
-The verb “tribe”, which we can establish is synonymous with “rub”.
This is what an expression or speech is called that is characterized by its virulence and its aggressive content against something or someone.
For example: “The team’s coach was fined for his tirade against the judges”, “I think the deputy’s tirade does not deserve any response”, “The actor’s racist tirade was soon condemned by public opinion”.
Synonyms of diatribe are, therefore, words such as attack, satire, libel or invective. As for antonyms, we come across terms such as panegyric, praise or defense. See Abbreviation Finder for acronyms related to diatribe.
Violence is the main characteristic of a diatribe. In general, these messages are controversial and, on occasion, constitute an insult, since they usually contemplate aggression and even defamation.
Suppose a soccer player is asked for his opinion on the performance of the referee in a match. The athlete states: “He is a thief! I think someone paid him to harm us. Or maybe he is a bum who is not qualified to lead any meeting. The truth is that he should not enter the field of play again because he does a lot of damage to football ”. Due to the tenor of his words, his sayings can be defined as a diatribe.
Diatribes are frequent in fields where debates and dialectical confrontations are frequent, such as politics. For this reason, in the context of an electoral campaign, it is common for candidates to deliver diatribes to the media or to their supporters with the intention of damaging the image of their rivals and, simultaneously, enhancing their own.
Within the field of culture, the term that concerns us now has been used on more than one occasion to be able to give a title to songs, literary works, poems, works of art… A good example of this is the book “Diatribe of love against a man seated”.
It is a one-act monologue written by the author Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, which was published in 1994. He introduces us to a woman, Graciela, who has been married to her husband for 25 years. What she does of her is to go to him to express how unhappy she feels about her, that she is disenchanted with the marriage and even that her feelings have been on the decline.
However, that female is not able to tell him that she no longer loves him. And it is that if I exposed it to her, it would be recognizing that she has wasted that time by her side.
