A.Word.A.Day --molochize

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Feb 15, 2018

This week’s theme
People who became verbs

This week’s words
adonize
bogart
hooverize
molochize
napoleonize

A Moloch statue from the 1914 film Cabiria, at the National Museum of Cinema, Turin, Italy

Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra/Wikimedia

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

molochize

PRONUNCIATION:

(MOL-uh-kyz)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To sacrifice.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Moloch, a Canaanite god of the Bible, associated with the practice of child sacrifice. Earliest documented use: 1825.

USAGE:

“Look to the skies, then to the river, strike
Their hearts, and hold their babies up to it.
I think that they would Molochize them too,
To have the heavens clear.”
Alfred Tennyson; Harold; 1876.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be the system of a regular government. -Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher (15 Feb 1748-1832)

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