expiatory sacrifice
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As the state Librarian dryly explained: "It is an expiatory sacrifice to veracity, to good sense and true taste."
From Time Magazine Archive
Nor do I look to be entreated, or am I subject to take pet, and require an expiatory sacrifice if some ceremony be omitted.
From The Praise of Folly by Wilson, John
As if the little life that had passed with that morning mist had represented some ascending expiatory sacrifice, it seemed to have brought them into closer communion.
From A First Family of Tasajara by Harte, Bret
He looked around on their abstracted faces; in their gloomy savage enthusiasm for expiatory sacrifice, he was horrified to find the same unreasoning exaltation that had checked his exhortations then.
From By Shore and Sedge by Harte, Bret
He "died unto sin once," as an expiatory sacrifice to atone for the guilt of an elect world.
From Notes on the Apocalypse by Steele, David
