anathema

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“
Placing an anathema -- in earlier times the curse of excommunication and death, not just a vehement curse -- upon those who damage or steal books can be traced back at least 28 centuries.

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Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

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

  • A sufficient number of commentaries were not wanting upon the consequences of such an anathema, the laws of the state, and the power and displeasure of the government: but the grief of his wife, who was pregnant, and the thoughts of his family and friends, had far more effect upon M. de Lafayette. —  Memoirs Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette
  • Placing an anathema -- in earlier times the curse of excommunication and death, not just a vehement curse -- upon those who damage or steal books can be traced back at least 28 centuries. —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 3
  • I queried the Oracle how I might regain my place in my society without performing anathema, and the Oracle told me 'Culti - vate blue.' —  Split Infinity
  • Cato in the teeth of an explicit presbyterial anathema, and again in the same year — in the month of August — the boys of the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy, which Smith was at the time attending, enacted the piece their master had written. —  Life of Adam Smith
  • The Patriarch immediately issued orders to his clergy, to see that the temporal penalties threatened in the anathema were all inflicted. —  History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I.
 

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. 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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  1. Late Latin anathěma, from Greek ἀνάθεμα (in the Septuagint and the New Testament and hence in ecclesiastical Greek and L.), anything devoted to evil, an accursed thing, a curse; especially of excommunication, an accursed or excommunicated person; in classical Greek simply ‘anything offered up or dedicated,’ being another form of the regular ἀνάθημα, a votive offering set up in a temple, especially as an ornament, hence also an ornament, a delight (later Late Latin anathēma, an offering, a gift), literally ‘that which is set up’; from ἀνατιθέναι, set up, dedicate, offer, from ἀνά, up, + τιθέναι, put, place, set: see ana- and theme. The forms of anathema are thus distinguished: anathēma, when the dedication is carried out by the preservation of the object as a pious offering (Luke xxi. 5); anathěma, when it has in view the destruction of the object as accursed (Josh. vii. 12). A relic of the former and original sense of the word is found in the anathēmata of the middle ages, which were gifts and ornaments bestowed upon the church and consecrated to the worship of God. The principal English uses, however, are derived from the form anathěma.
  2. Late Latin (Vulgate) anathema, Maran atha, from Greek ἀνάθεμα, μαρα\ν ἀθά, properly separated by a period, being the end of a sentence, Greek η῎τωἀνάθεμα, Late Latin sit anathema, let him be anathema, followed by another sentence, μαρἀν ἀθα), from Syriac māran′ ethā′, literally the Lord hath come, here used apparently as a solemn formula of confirmation, like amen, q. v.
 

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/æˈnæθəmə/
by American Heritage
by Parker Smith

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