ritual killing

1. 1.

   the act of killing (an animal or person) in order to propitiate a deity

   Synonymssacrifice

   Broaderkilling

   Narrowerhecatombimmolation

   animal

Questions about ritual killing

What does ritual killing mean?

ritual killing means "the act of killing (an animal or person) in order to propitiate a deity".

What is another word for ritual killing?

Close synonyms include sacrifice. 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 ritual killing a common word?

ritual killing 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.