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

But under the logic of the bailout, the markets were in charge, and the overarching aim of the government was to propitiate them to avoid disaster.

From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2010

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

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

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

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

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

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

While it powerfully propitiates the reader, it almost converts condemnation into compassion.

From Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey by Joseph Cottle

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

In India, however, the accused was feared and terribly propitiated by millions as Kali, goddess of death and catastrophe, wife-conqueror of the eternal Siva, the dancer.

From Time Magazine Archive

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

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

A servant brought the wine, of which Father Christopher partook, feeling the necessity of propitiating the host.

From The Betrothed From the Italian of Alessandro Manzoni by Alessandro Manzoni

Next he has the resource of prayer, and the power of propitiating Heaven by customary rites and sacrifices, and by a life of piety and innocence.

From The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil by W. Y. Sellar

Alex' old, pitiful instinct of propitiating the being she loved best sprang to life within her.

From Consequences by E. M. Delafield