apostasy

1. 1.

   the state of having rejected your religious beliefs or your political party or a cause (often in favor of opposing beliefs or causes)

   Synonymsrenunciationdefection

   Broaderrejection
2. 2.

   the act of abandoning a party for cause

   Synonymstergiversation

   Broaderabandonment

Other forms of apostasy

plural

apostasies·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about apostasy

What does apostasy mean?

apostasy means "the state of having rejected your religious beliefs or your political party or a cause (often in favor of opposing beliefs or causes)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in apostasy?

apostasy has 4 syllables: a-po-sta-sy. The stress falls on "po".

What is another word for apostasy?

Close synonyms include renunciation, defection, tergiversation. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is apostasy a common word?

apostasy is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.