sacrifice

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The act of giving up something valuable for the sake of something more important.

   Her parents made many sacrifices so that she could go to university.

2. 2
   verb

   To give up something important in order to gain or protect something else.

   He sacrificed his free time to care for his sick mother.

3. 3
   noun

   The killing of a person or animal, or the offering of an object, to a god as part of a religious rite.

   The ancient temple was used for animal sacrifice.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Sacrifice, recorded in Middle English, belongs to the Latin word family based on sacer, “holy.” The same root also underlies sacrament, sacred, sacrilege, and execrate.

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *seh₂k- Proto-Indo-European *-rós Proto-Indo-European *sh₂krós Proto-Italic *sakros Old Latin sacros Latin sacerder. Latin sacrum Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-der. Proto-Indo-European *dʰh₁k-yé-ti Proto-Italic *θakjō Proto-Italic *fakjō Latin faciō Proto-Indo-European *-yós Proto-Italic *-ios Old Latin -ios Latin -ius Latin -ium Latin sacrificiumlbor. Old French sacrifisebor. Middle English sacrifice English sacrifice From Middle English sacrifice (“act of offering a life or object to a deity; the life or object so offered”), from Anglo-Norman sacrefiz, and Old…

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary