penance
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.
There are the shamefaced former members, who confess their gullibility as a kind of penance; there are the cockamamie claims on which the belief system is based.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 28, 2026
The reader is invited to follow her often frightening pursuit of spiritual penance.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 28, 2026
Williams’ Anna absorbs his fury as though it were the penance she herself would mete out for her sins.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 15, 2025
Somewhere deep in the wiring, there was still this belief that a salad, no matter how decadent, was supposed to be a kind of penance.
From Salon • May 19, 2025
Sometimes I play with the fantasy that I am a princess who, in penance for some tiny transgression, has undertaken to feed each of her subjects by hand.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
Vocabulary lists containing penance
Fahrenheit 451
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The Poet X
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The Joy Luck Club
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