Sacrifice
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
- To offer as a gift to a deity.
- To give away more or less altruistically something valuable to get at least a possibility to gain something else of value (such as self-respect, trust, love, freedom, prosperity), or to avoid an even greater loss.
- “If you trade a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice, if you trade a dollar for a penny, it is.” - From the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
- “Don’t you break my heart / ’Cause I sacrifice to make you happy.” - From the song Baby Don’t You Do It by Marvin Gaye
- “God sacrificed His only-begotten Son, so that all people might have eternal life.”
Sacrifice (from a Middle English verb meaning "to make sacred", from Old French, from Latin sacrificium: sacer, "sacred" + facere, "to make") is commonly known as the practice of offering food or the lives of animals or people to the gods as an act of propitiation or worship. The term is also used metaphorically to describe selfless good deeds for others or a short term loss in return for a greater gain (such as in a game of chess).
The practice of sacrifice is found in the oldest human records. The archaeological record contains human and animal corpses with sacrificial marks long before any written records of the practice. Sacrifices are a common theme in most religions, though the frequency of animal, and especially human, sacrifices are rare today.
See also
