Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Priestly policy or system of management based on temporal or material interest; the arts practised by selfish and ambitious priests to gain wealth and power, or to impose on the credulity of others.
Wiktionary
- n. the craft of performing the duties of a priest
- n. pejorative priestly policy directed towards worldly ends
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Priestly policy; the policy of a priesthood; esp., in an ill sense, fraud or imposition in religious concerns; management by priests to gain wealth and power by working upon the religious motives or credulity of others.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the skills involved in the work of a priest
- n. a derogatory reference to priests who use their influence to control secular or political affairs
Etymologies
- “priest” + “craft” (Wiktionary)
Examples
“In Florence, too, the hell-on-earth created by priestcraft is coarsely and pungently denounced: young Vespucci capers happily around the pyre on the day that Savonarola is burned and the reign of clerical puritan terror brought to a close.”
“Here, if any where, the cloven foot shows itself and teaches us that the only solid stratum underlying priestcraft is one composed of £ s.”
“He’s engaged in priestcraft, using God to make money.”
“Most of their priestcraft was a vulgar imposition upon the ignorance and credulity of the common people.”
“I feel that it is not necessary for me to go further to convince any one of my readers that the lustfulness of the priestcraft is a menace to the chastity of womankind, for if this nun has told the truth, and which I know from past experiences is true, and which I also know is a recital that could be intensified ten thousand times over, if the whole truth could be told, but which cannot be told in this volume, as I have too much respect for my readers to recite what I have seen with my own eyes and what I have had repeated to me by broken-hearted "sisters" who have come to me with tears in their eyes and with sighs in their throats to tell me of their miseries.”
“If they had, I should have suspected "priestcraft" and forgeries and third-century”
“What he called "priestcraft" was abhorrent to him.”
“Christ Jesus is the way of life, and he is a plain way, a pleasant way, a way suitable for the tottering feet and feeble knees of trembling sinners: am I found in this way, or am I hunting after another track such as priestcraft or metaphysics may promise me?”
“However, it isn't the "priestcraft" of any earthly priests but the doing of our own”
“priestcraft," an equality as little affected by colour as the equality of a black chess pawn and a white, we discover that all men are individual and unique, and, through long ranges of comparison, superior and inferior upon countless scores.”
Anticipations Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human life and Thought
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘priestcraft’.
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religion
who is this god person, anyway? (--Douglas Adams)
sachristy, vestry, diocese, papal, cardinal, pope, polygamy, seven, father, chaplain, vestments, blessing and 227 more...
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The Innocents Abroad
Words rounded up while reading The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.
rakish, excursionist, bowelless, pilgrimizing, melodeon, woebegone, abaft, sextant, veriest, behindhand, stanchion, avast and 188 more...
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Words gathered while reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
refectory, soutane, ha-ha, jewelly, girt, centenary, collywobbles, coadjutor, catafalque, beeftea, pierhead, bedad and 235 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, P
pellucid, pertain, pampas, prate, pinecone, philistine, pantocrator, papaverine, postmeridian, potlatch, pharology, pinniped and 622 more...
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Vocabulary
Good vocabulary words to know and remember
ingratiate, nadir, palpable, scion, gregarious, petulant, iconoclast, locus, jaded, callous, travail, ignominious and 22 more...
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