witchcraft

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They deal very differently with these matters in Russia, where, in a recent trial of a similar nature, the witchcraft was admitted as an extenuating circumstance and the culprits who had burnt a witch were all acquitted.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun Magic; sorcery.
  2. noun Wicca.
  3. noun A magical or irresistible influence, attraction, or charm.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

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Examples (50)

  • The belief in witchcraft, which is scarcely more absurd, still lingers in the popular mind; but few are so credulous as to believe that any elixir could make man live for centuries, or turn all our iron and pewter into gold. —  Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
  • The king and his chiefs are generally supreme in this brotherhood of heathen superstition, and the purity of the sacrificed virgin, in the ceremony just described was unquestionably yielded to her brutal prince FOOTNOTE 6] From the Portuguese feitiço_--witchcraft CHAPTER XLI I have always regretted that I left Ayudah on my homeward voyage without interpreters to aid in the necessary intercourse with our slaves. —  Captain Canot or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver
  • These same people once hung women for witchcraft, and slaughtered women for persisting in certain religious beliefs. —  As A Chinaman Saw Us Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home
  • Not the least unaccountable fact in the history and literature of witchcraft is the absurd contradiction involved in the unbounded credulity of writers (who were sceptical on almost every other subject) on the one subject of demonology The author of the 'Saints' Everlasting Rest,' the moderate and conscientious Baxter, was a contemporary of the Anglican divine. —  The Superstitions of Witchcraft
  • The alleged crimes were: flying to their place of assembly by witchcraft, adoring the devil, trampling upon the cross, blasphemy, riotous feasting, and vile offences against morality--staple charges recurring again and again, ad nauseam_, whenever persecuted men and women have been compelled to meet secretly for God's worship. —  The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2)
 

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sorcery ·  necromancy ·  adultery ·  heresy ·  astrology ·  treason ·  idolatry ·  divination ·  treachery ·  sodomy ·  rape ·  cannibalism
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 (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Middle English wicchecraft, from Anglo-Saxon wiccecræft, wiccræft, witchcraft, from wicca, masculine, wicce, feminine, witch, + cræft, craft: see witchand craft.
 

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/ˈwɪtʃkræft/
by American Heritage

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