anathema

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“
Father! by that dread anathema which is on our race, which has made us homeless and powerless--outcasts and strangers in the land; by the persecution and anguish we have known, teach thy lordly heart that we are rightly punished for the persecution and the anguish we doomed to Him, whose footstep hallowed our native earth!

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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 (50)

  • For language mavens language change is generally anathema, which is ironic since many of their favorite English authors spoke and wrote in Englishes that were very different from those that they speak and write in- but that's another blog post.Safire provisionally traces the history of don't do X to the stereotypical line delivered by women hired as domestic servants: I don't do windows.
  • In the same year the boys of Perth Grammar School played 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
  • All traces of the past are considered anathema, all history suspect, and everything has to contribute towards the technological leap that the Akans now officially want en masse. —  Challenging Destiny #19
  • While the article has many interesting observations, Owen puts a fine point on a subject that is often neglected and has relevance both to proposals to put a price on carbon and the future of Detroit, namely the mathematical equivalence between cheaper gas -- anathema to many environmentalists-and, paradoxically, higher fuel economy —  NDN blogs
  • Your doctor and many of his colleagues regarded medical killing as anathema, and were incensed by describing their integrity as a physicians as a "feeling". —  American Thinker
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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.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  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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