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Anathemas

 - 3 dictionary results

a⋅nath⋅e⋅ma

  [uh-nath-uh-muh]
Use Anathemas in a Sentence
–noun, plural -mas.
1. a person or thing detested or loathed: That subject is anathema to him.
2. a person or thing accursed or consigned to damnation or destruction.
3. a formal ecclesiastical curse involving excommunication.
4. any imprecation of divine punishment.
5. a curse; execration.
Origin:
1520–30; < L < Gk: a thing accursed, devoted to evil, orig. devoted, equiv. to ana(ti)thé(nai) to set up + -ma n. suffix
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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a·nath·e·ma   (ə-nāth'ə-mə)   
n.   pl. a·nath·e·mas

  1. A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication.

  2. A vehement denunciation; a curse: "the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue" (Nathaniel Hawthorne).

  3. One that is cursed or damned.

  4. One that is greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned: "Essentialism—a belief in natural, immutable sex differences—is anathema to postmodernists, for whom sexuality itself, along with gender, is a 'social construct'" (Wendy Kaminer).


[Late Latin anathema, doomed offering, accursed thing, from Greek, from anatithenai, anathe-, to dedicate : ana-, ana- + tithenai, to put; see dhē- in Indo-European roots.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

anathema 
1526, from L. anathema "an excommunicated person, the curse of excommunication," from Gk. anathema "a thing accursed," originally "a thing devoted," lit. "a thing set up (to the gods)," from ana- "up" + tithenai "to place," from PIE base *dhe- "to put, to do" (see factitious). Originally simply a votive offering, by the time it reached L. the meaning had progressed through "thing devoted to evil," to "thing accursed or damned." Later applied to persons and the Divine Curse. Anathema maranatha, taken as an intensified form, is a misreading of the Syriac maran etha "the Lord hath come," which follows anathema in I Cor. xvi.22, but is not connected with it.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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