Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of imprecating.
  • noun A curse.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of imprecating or invoking evil; a malediction; a prayer or expressed wish that a curse or calamity may befall some one.
  • noun Synonyms Curse, Execration, etc. See malediction.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of imprecating, or invoking evil upon any one; a prayer that a curse or calamity may fall on any one; a curse.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of imprecating, or invoking evil upon someone; a prayer that a curse or calamity may befall someone.
  • noun A curse.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a slanderous accusation
  • noun the act of calling down a curse that invokes evil (and usually serves as an insult)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin imprecātio ("calling down of curses"), from imprecor ("call down, invoke"), from in- ("towards") + precor ("pray").

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Examples

  • The excommunication was interpreted as an "imprecation" that cursed all Freemasons and doomed them to perdition.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 9: Laprade-Mass Liturgy 1840-1916 1913

  • The Poems of the mourner himself have now passed through innumerable editions, and are universally known, but if, when Collins died, the same kind of imprecation had been pronounced by a surviving admirer, small is the number whom it would not have comprehended.

    Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations Edmund Spenser 1730

  • “If no other man has slept with you and if you have not gone astray in defilement while married to your husband, may you be safe from harm from this water of bitterness… But if you have gone astray… may the LORD make you a curse and an imprecation among your people, with the LORD causing your thigh to sag and your belly to be distended.”

    In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

  • “If no other man has slept with you and if you have not gone astray in defilement while married to your husband, may you be safe from harm from this water of bitterness… But if you have gone astray… may the LORD make you a curse and an imprecation among your people, with the LORD causing your thigh to sag and your belly to be distended.”

    In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

  • “If no other man has slept with you and if you have not gone astray in defilement while married to your husband, may you be safe from harm from this water of bitterness… But if you have gone astray… may the LORD make you a curse and an imprecation among your people, with the LORD causing your thigh to sag and your belly to be distended.”

    In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

  • “If no other man has slept with you and if you have not gone astray in defilement while married to your husband, may you be safe from harm from this water of bitterness… But if you have gone astray… may the LORD make you a curse and an imprecation among your people, with the LORD causing your thigh to sag and your belly to be distended.”

    In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

  • Once, with a muttered imprecation, Kama leaped away, a stick of firewood in hand, and clubbed apart a tangle of fighting dogs.

    Chapter IV 2010

  • Finally, his closing remarks were deadly: An overly flowery imprecation to courage that, ironically, made him sound utterly impotent:

    Obama's Speech: Not The Turning Point He Had In Mind 2010

  • But of course, "liberal" isn't imprecation enough for his outrage: the Democrats are "committed," rather, "to a secular-socialist ideology that is alien to America's history and traditions."

    A Newt Gingrich Time Warp 2010

  • Then, as she jerked at it and muttered another imprecation, the skirt came free and quickly dropped to cover most of what had interested him.

    Shameless KAREN ROBARDS 2010

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