exorcism

From Old French exorciser, from Late Latin exorcizō, from Ancient Greek ἐξορκίζω (exorkízō, “to ward off, to charge under oath, adjure”), from ἐξ (ex) + ὅρκος (hórkos).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɛk.sɔː.sɪ.zəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɛk.sɔɹˌsɪ.zəm/, /ˈɛk.sɚˌsɪ.zəm/

exorcism (countable and uncountable, plural exorcisms)

1. The ritual act of driving out evil spirits from persons, places or things that are possessed by them.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:

     Master Hume, we are therefore prouided: / will her Ladyship behold and heare our Exorcismes?

   • 1722 March, H[enry] F[oe] [pseudonym; Daniel Defoe], A Journal of the Plague Year: […], London: […] E[lizabeth] Nutt […]; J. Roberts […]; A. Dodd […]; and J. Graves […], →OCLC:

     But in this part I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the people deceived, or equally in both; and this was in wearing charms, philtres, exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations, to fortify the body with them against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, […] .

   • 1874–1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], published 1881, →OCLC:

     The imputed virtue of folios full of knockdown arguments is supposed to reside in them, just as some of the majesty of the British Empire dwells in the constable’s truncheon. They are used in pure superstition, as old clodhoppers spoil Latin by way of an exorcism.

• exorcise
• exorcist
• exorcistical
• exorcistic
• adorcism

• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “exorcism”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Borrowed from French exorcisme.

• IPA^(key): /ek.sorˈt͡ʃism/

exorcism n (uncountable)

1. exorcism

• “exorcism”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2026