3 results for: Anathemas

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This

a·nath·e·ma

Audio Help [uh-nath-uh-muh] Pronunciation Key

–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

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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Anathemas

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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

a·nath·e·ma Audio Help (ə-nāth'ə-mə) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. a·nath·e·mas

A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication.
A vehement denunciation; a curse: "the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue" (Nathaniel Hawthorne).
One that is cursed or damned.
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.]

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