propitiate

So when an epidemic gets underway, we don’t waste time on sacrifices to propitiate angry gods or fretting about deadly miasmas seeping in with the night air.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 28, 2020

I suspect that Oskar probably still believes that it was just something in my nature: that somebody needed to be sacrificed on the altar on the way to propitiate whatever, and that that was him.

From Slate ● Jun. 28, 2016

Was it just to tell the date or propitiate some mountain deity?

From The Guardian ● Feb. 8, 2013

Mr. Talbott, who won the first Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award for a new play with “The Submission,” understands the conflicting urges to propitiate and attack that spring from the insecurities of a life in the theater.

From New York Times ● Sep. 28, 2011

Roger’s daemon anxiously wagged her terrier tail to propitiate him.

From "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman

Of William’s father, who propitiates a wealthy relative, we read: “he wasn’t a mercenary man, but this was his only rich unmarried aunt.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026

There is a humble, civil air about the people in the Vallée d'Ossau, which propitiates one: the berret is always taken off as a stranger passes, and a kind salutation uniformly given.

From Béarn and the Pyrenees A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre by Louisa Stuart Costello

Is it not that Christ is again offered in sacrifice, and that the pain he endures in being so propitiates God in your behalf?

From Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge by James Aitken Wylie

And nothing so effectually as an evening bath, as my experience testifies, cures fatigue and propitiates to dreamless slumber....

From With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 3 by Various

The Indian yields to it a sort of worship, propitiates it with offerings of tobacco, thanks it in prosperity, and upbraids it in disaster.

From The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century by Francis Parkman

True to form, Iranians haven't been propitiated by such gestures.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026

I promise I won't let our multithreaded discussion veer too far down the red carpet, but the Oscars are the Oscars; their vestal fires burn, their gods must be propitiated.

From Slate ● Jan. 16, 2014

For 700 years the Romans propitiated a special god of stem rust, Robigo.

From Time Magazine Archive

He propitiated many of Germany's other former enemies by dropping to his knees in front of a memorial to the victims of the Warsaw ghetto.

From Time Magazine Archive

The gods had to be propitiated, and a vast industry of priests and oracles arose to make the gods less angry.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

He suggests that they may have perceived the cave walls as a kind of membrane between their world and the spirits, and thus created their paintings as a means of propitiating them.

From The Guardian ● May 23, 2020

On this teacher’s advice, the Dalai Lama had himself been propitiating this dangerous spirit – along with innumerable other esoteric rituals – as part of his daily four hours of meditation and spiritual exercise.

From Newsweek

This in a propitiating tone, adding to myself, “you would be much more likely to tell a lie to get one into trouble.”

From Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet The Story of a King's Daughter by Elizabeth W. (Elizabeth Williams) Champney

At this point, moreover, had ceased the pretended influence of Mohammad ibn Mohammad, Sultán of Tajúra, the utter futility of propitiating whom had long been sufficiently apparent.

From The Highlands of Ethiopia by William Cornwallis Harris

Yet the chief of them all and his immediate disciples founded a hermitage in the wilderness, where they devoted themselves to propitiating the wrath of God.

From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume II by Henry Charles Lea