Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Sacrilege Meaning and Usage


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Sacrilege Meaning:

noun

- desecration, profanation, misuse, or theft of something sacred.
- disrespect for a person who is widely admired or a belief that is widely accepted
“it is a sacrilege to offend democracy”

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Derivatives:
sacrilegist - noun
sacrilegious - adjective
sacrilegiously - adverb
sacrilegiousness – noun

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Use sacrilege in a sentence:

1. Neither saint nor sanctuary was to be safe from the sacrilegious hands of the heathen from across the North Sea.

2. Such was its reputation that it seemed sacrilege to dare to improve on it.

3. I am still, to this day, apologizing to my dear friend Pierre for dragging him out to witness such sacrilege.

4. When you have been given something in a moment of grace, it is sacrilegious to be greedy

5. For your age, is it not shameful on your part to indulge in such a sacrilegious act of stretching your legs toward God?

6. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people.

7. In the center of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis Quinze table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps.

8. “I have felt it to be a sacrilege to divert a brain which is capable of the highest original research to any lesser object.”

9. Gabriel started tossing one arm in frantic gestures, hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity.

10. The inscription contains a curse on any who perpetrate any sacrilegious act against the remains of the pharaoh.

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Sacrilege Synonyms:
abomination, abuse, atrocity, befouling, befoulment, blasphemy, contamination, crime, debasement, defilement, desecration, disgrace, dishonouring, disrespect, fouling, heresy, ignominy, impiety, impiousness, infamy, irreverence, maltreatment, misuse, mockery, offense, outrage, perversion, profanation, profaneness, profanity, shame, sin, violation, vitiation.

Sacrilege Antonyms:
piety, respect, respectfulness, reverence

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Know more…

Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object. In a less proper sense, any transgression against the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege. It can come in the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things. When the sacrilegious offence is verbal, it is called blasphemy.

Sacrilegious, the adjective form of sacrilege is often misspelled through confusion with religious. The origins of these words are different; they are in no way related.

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Sacrilege Origin:

The term originates from the Latin (The term was initially used in reference to temple robbing)

sacer sacred + legere to gather, pick up, steal
to gather or pick up, sacred things; robbing sacred things,

Thereby the robber has desecrated the holy place; has gone against the God.

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Some more example sentences:

1. Elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed

2. Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea to the mountain top, was sacred to the god Lono in olden times--so sacred that if a common native set his sacrilegious foot upon it it was judicious for him to make his will, because his time had come.

3. Jane always wore her amethyst brooch to church. She would have thought it rather sacrilegious to leave it off— as bad as forgetting her Bible or her collection dime. That amethyst brooch was Jane’s most treasured possession.

4. "Do you realize, your Highness, that an attack on the Foundation is nothing short of sacrilege of the highest order?"

5. It was an unscrupulous sacrilege to appropriate to own use, the offerings to the gods.

6. “Anyone finding gold and precious stones must bring them to the monastery; to keep them for themselves would be sacrilege. “

7. He was amazed and amused to discover how guilty that last thought made him feel-almost as if he had committed an act of sacrilege. But that didn't make the thought any less true.

8. Discipline is discipline, and rules are rules … These are like commandments in the Holy Scriptures of the Trader. Not observing them is sacrilege, a blasphemy.

9. The horrendous county office building is an example of architectural sacrilege.

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Read it somewhere….

"Every connection," said Pointdexter. "To construct a time machine is itself a challenge to fate. You make it worse by your flat confidence. How can you be sure that your time-travel machine will operate through all of time without the possibility of paradox?"

Barron said, "I didn’t know you were superstitious. The simple fact is that a time machine is a machine like any other machine, no more and no less sacrilegious. Mathematically, it is analogous to an elevator moving up and down its shaft. What danger of retribution lies in that?"

Pointdexter said energetically, "An elevator doesn’t involve paradoxes. You can’t move from the fifth floor to the fourth and kill your grandfather as a child."

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