propitiate

Before he was reinstated, the Anderson School’s Faculty Executive Committee tried to propitiate the mob by announcing itself “saddened” by Klein’s “troubling conduct.”

From Washington Post ● Oct. 8, 2021

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

Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him.

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

They believe that shaving the head of the dead propitiates the deities in their favour.

From Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs by Silver, Jacob Mortimer Wier

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 Costello, Louisa Stuart

Sacrifice propitiates God, but mercy imitates Him, and imitation is the perfection of divine service.

From Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII by Maclaren, Alexander

Ages, empires, civilisations pass, and leave some members even of educated mankind still, in certain points, on the level of the savage who propitiates with gifts, or addresses with prayers, the spirits of the dead.

From Cock Lane and Common-Sense by Lang, Andrew

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

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

They must be fed and put to sleep, propitiated with hymns, songs and prayers.

From Time Magazine Archive

Villagers prevailed upon construction workers to stop work until the dragon had been propitiated.

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

IT had aspects of a secular, almost pagan holiday�a sense of propitiating an earth increasingly incapable of forgiving what man has inflicted upon it.

From Time Magazine Archive

The former dropped a propitiating hand on Soane’s shoulder.

From The Moonlit Way by Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)

A timber merchant at Calicut in Malabar is said to have spent more than a thousand rupees in propitiating the spirit of a deceased Brāhman under the following circumstances.

From Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Thurston, Edgar