Excommunication
['ɛkskə,mjʊnə'keʃən]
Definition
(noun.) the act of banishing a member of a church from the communion of believers and the privileges of the church; cutting a person off from a religious society.
(noun.) the state of being excommunicated.
Checked by Claudia--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) The act of communicating or ejecting; esp., an ecclesiastical censure whereby the person against whom it is pronounced is, for the time, cast out of the communication of the church; exclusion from fellowship in things spiritual.
Inputed by Avis
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. Dismission, or expulsion (from the church), denunciation, proscription, anathema, ban.
Typist: Robinson
Examples
- He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments, if I continued obdurate. Mary Shelley. Frankenstein_Or_The Modern Prometheus.
- Nothing else to be permitted to those same vagrants the Arts, on pain of excommunication. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- All sorts of men must have been impressed by the futility of the excommunications and interdicts that were levelled at Frederick. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- This Sixth Crusade was indeed not only the _reductio ad absurdum_ of crusades, but of papal excommunications. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- Riots and excommunications and banishments punctuated these controversies, and finally came official persecutions. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
Edited by Emily