holocaust

noun

1. An offering or sacrifice to a deity that is completely burned to ashes.

   “And the ſcribe ſayde vnto hym: well maſter⸝ thou haſt ſayde the trugthe⸝ thatt there ys one God⸝ and that there is none but he. And to love hym with all the herte⸝ and with all the mynde⸝ and with all the ſoule⸝ ãd with all the ſtrẽgthe. And to love a mans nehbour as hym ſilfe⸝ ys a greater thynge then all holocauſtꝭ [holocaustes] and ſacrifiſes.”

   “[…] Iſaac carried on his back the wood for the ſacrifice; which being an holocauſt or burnt offering to be conſumed unto aſhes, we cannot well conceive the wood a burthen for a boy; but ſuch a one unto Iſaac, as that which it typified was unto Chriſt, that is the wood or croſſe whereon he ſuffered; […]”

   “In the firſt part whereof [i.e., of the inner court of the Temple of God mentioned in Revelation 11:1] is the Temple, which conſiſts of the Sanctum, and Sanctum Sanctorum, and in the latter part thereof ſtands the Altar of Holocauſts, which whole ſpace therefore is Thyſiaſterion, or the place of ſacrificing, and was not to be rendred Altar, but the place where the Altar ſtands.”

2. (also, broadly, figuratively)A complete or large offering or sacrifice.

   “Inſnar'd ſhe was in Shechems Treachery, / And, ſilly Mayden, ſuddenly became / An Holocauſt to Luſts unhappy Flame.”

   “Oh! and with what a noble freeness on the contrary will not that good soldier, the worthy Spaniard present himself, who, wreathed with laurels, shall run after triumph to the altar of his august mother (his country), and offer up to her in holocaust, the arms and the banners of the vanquished foe; or else testify his bravery by his blood, and body all over glorious sears.”

   “Is it because the Grand Seignior [of Turkey] does not recognise the religion of Christ, or because himself and his predecessors have so long enjoyed the privilege of shedding Christian blood at their pleasure? […] Surely the memorable facts of our [Greek] forefathers having created the arts and sciences, and propagated Christianity, furnish no good reason why their descendants should be offered up as holocausts to modern legitimacy!”

3. (broadly)Complete destruction by fire; also, the thing so destroyed.

   “So vertue giv'n for loſt, / Depreſt, and overthrown, as ſeem'd, / Like that ſelf-begott'n bird [the phoenix] / In the Arabian woods emboſt, / That no ſecond knows nor third, / And lay e're while a Holocauſt, / From out her aſhie womb now teem'd, / Revives, reflouriſhes, then vigorous moſt / When moſt unactive deem'd, / And though her body die, her fame ſurvives, / A ſecular bird ages of lives.”

   “A horrible holocaust occurred near Hollow Rock, in Benton County, about 7 o'clock last night. The residence of William F. Flowers was consumed by fire.”

   “The hut was a holocaust; men fighting their way out howled and coughed on smoke.”

4. (broadly, figuratively)Extensive destruction of a group of animals or (especially) people; a large-scale massacre or slaughter.

   “a nuclear holocaust”

   “ANOTHER ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST; Five Villages Burned, Five Thousand Persons Made Homeless, and Anti-Christians Organized [article title]. […] The Daily News will to-morrow publish a dispatch from Kara, stating that fresh outrages have been perpetrated in the Erzinzian district.”

   “[T]he entire Press, more particularly the French press, is worried lest there be some connection between the bloodless holocaust of German Generals and Ambassadors and the persistent reports that [Benito] Mussolini is about to intervene in Spain on the grand scale.”

5. (alt-of, broadly, figuratively)Alternative letter-case form of Holocaust (“the systematic mass murder (democide or genocide) of Jews (and, more broadly, of disabled people, homosexuals, Romanis, Slavs, and others) perpetrated by Nazi Germany shortly before and during World War II”); hence, the state-sponsored mass murder of a particular group of people in society.

verb

1. (also, figuratively, transitive)To sacrifice (chiefly an animal) to be completely burned.

   “Such acts muſt needs be his, who did deviſe / By crying Altars down, to ſacrifice / To private malice; where you might have ſeen / His conſcience holocauſted to his ſpleen.”

   “In 1767 [Alexander] Pope's rhymed Iliad had been in everybody's hand during forty years. What portion of that period had Doctor [Samuel] Langley devoted to his own blank verse? Did he survive to compare and compete it with [William] Cowper's? Has it been holocausted to Vulcan? or is it slumbering in the Langleian archives?”

   “Dionysus, once the great goat-god, turned into horned and hooved Satan, the scapegoat, who was banished (as the escape-goat) and later sacrificially burned (holocausted).”

   “Is it any wonder that the ruler of such a place would be worshipped with aversion rather than invocation? Or that the offering to underworld deities was traditionally an offering that was holocausted, completely burnt and given over to the god, as in the worship of the Olympians in their temples above?”

2. (transitive)To destroy (something) completely, especially by fire.

   “The meek and candid persecutor, Cardinal [Reginald] Pole, who killed and took possession when [Thomas] Cranmer was holocausted, built the chapel, and became the voucher for the truth of the absurd legend.”

   “I at once holocausted / My clothes to stamp out the infection—infection.”

   “A "holocaust of humdrum" is a very vile phrase, especially when you do not mean that the humdrum is holocausted, but that it holocausts something or somebody else.”

   “Sulla once said, before [Julius] Cæsar had made much of a showing, that some day this young man would be the ruin of the aristocracy, and twenty years afterward, when Cæsar sacked, assassinated and holocausted a whole theological seminary for saying "eyether" and "nyether," the old settlers recalled what Sulla had said.”

   “From the rising to the setting sun, from the West to the East, / Man shows himself as lower than the beast. / Bestial behaviour, in its fiery globe, / Praised to the sky and holocausting the globe.”

3. (transitive)To subject (a group of people) to a holocaust (mass annihilation); to destroy en masse.

   “Over the centuries, we [Jews] were expelled, pogromed, crusaded, inquisitioned, jihaded, and holocausted out of countries that we helped to make great.”

   “Some of these unshared poems are quite lengthy, about 90 lines each, and they work off the historical fact that Isaac was indeed holocausted, not once, but many times. And as a result, much of Europe and Islam are now happily free of Jews.”

   “I remember a front page photo in the Toronto Star of a bulldozer ready to push bodies into a mass grave, however, when I found the article in reference, the version that is available only shows the pile of dead and mentions the bulldozer; it does not show it. The article explained that it was because the Israeli curfew did not allow officials to properly bury the dead. The message, however, propagated through the photo and bulldozer reference is: Israel is "Holocausting" the Palestinians.”

   “Then like fifty years ago the Cardassians invaded Bajor and enslaved the people and basically holocausted them.”

4. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of holocaust (“subject to a mass annihilation; destroy en masse”).

name

1. (historical, uncountable, usually)The systematic mass murder (genocide) of an estimated six million European Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II.

   “Among Soloway’s congregants injured in the attack was Barbara Steinmetz, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who has become one of the most poignant symbols of the attack.”

2. (broadly, historical, uncommon, uncountable, usually)The systematic mass murder (democide) perpetrated by Nazi Germany of somewhere between eleven and fourteen million people they considered subhuman, namely six million Jews and from five to eight million others (including Romanis, Slavs, homosexuals, and people with physical and mental disabilities).

   “For quotations using this term, see Citations:Holocaust.”