Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To abandon one's religious faith, a political party, one's principles, or a cause.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To abandon one's profession or church; forsake one's principles; retrograde from one's faith; withdraw from one's party. Also spelled
apostatise .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To renounce totally a religious belief once professed; to forsake one's church, the faith or principles once held, or the party to which one has previously adhered.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To give up or
renounce one'sposition orbelief .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb abandon one's beliefs or allegiances
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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To apostatize from Christ is to apostatize from the living God (Heb 2: 3).
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What does it mean to 'apostatize' in the first place? "
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The upshot was that he advised Nathan not to apostatize too suddenly.
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Their actions can give us some gauge: depending on whether they accept martyrdom or apostatize; build a monastery or molest little girls; become suicide bombers or found the Missionaries of Charity.
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Some few poets were bought over; but, among men following the profession of the press, a change of politics is an infringement of the point of honor, and a man must FIGHT as well as apostatize.
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Catholic missionaries still continued to arrive, but eventually all were killed or forced to leave or to apostatize.
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In these words Jacob binds himself never to apostatize from the pure worship of the One God; for there is no doubt that he here comprises the sum of piety.
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The very name points at 'apostasy,' not so much that the devil was an apostate, as that this devil provoked and enticed people to apostatize:
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Our Saviour had before taught how necessary it was for him that would apply himself to Christ and his religion, to weigh and consider things beforehand, how great and difficult things he must undergo, lest when he hath begun in the undertaking he faint and go back; he apostatize, and become unsavoury salt.
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In Constantius 'days they almost all turned Arians, so that there were very few bishops that did not apostatize or betray the truth, even of the very men that had been in the Council of Nicaea.
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