English
holocaust
see also: Holocaust
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ˈhɒləkɔːst/
  • (America) IPA: /ˈhɑləkɔst/, /ˈhoʊləkɔst/
  • (America, Canada, cot-caught) IPA: /ˈhɑləkɑst/, /ˈhoʊləkɑst/
Noun

holocaust (plural holocausts)

  1. A sacrifice that is completely burned to ashes. [from the 13th c]
    • 1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Mark XII:
      And to love a mans nehbour as hymsilfe, ys a greater thynge then all holocaustes and sacrifises.
    • 1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, III.3:
      in the holocaust or burnt-offering of Moses, the gall was cast away: for, as Ben Maimon instructeth, the inwards, whereto the gall adhereth, were taken out with the crop (according unto the law,) which the priest did not burn, but cast unto the east [...].
  2. Extensive destruction of a group (usually of people or animals), whether by deliberate agency or by natural agency (especially fire). [from the 19th c]
    • 1895 September 10, "ANOTHER ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST; Five Villages Burned, Five Thousand Persons Made Homeless, and Anti-Christians Organized.", in The New York Times
    • 1925, Melville Chater, History's Greatest Trek, in The National Geographic Magazine
      But the initial episodes of the Exchange drama were enacted to the accompaniment of the boom of cannon and the rattle of machine guns and with the settings painted by the flames of the Smyrna holocaust [...]
    • 1938, The Palestine Post (Sunday February 6 1938), volume XIV, No. 3567, page 4, column 4 (beneath "Help for Franco?"):
      […] the 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 Mussolini is about to intervene in Spain on the grand scale.
    • 1954, Talbot Jennings, Jan Lustig, Noel Langley, Knights of the Round Table (film)
      None will emerge the victor from this holocaust.
    a nuclear holocaust
  3. In particular, a state-sponsored mass murder of an ethnic group, especially the Holocaust (which see). [from the 20th c]
Related terms Translations Translations Translations Verb

holocaust (holocausts, present participle holocausting; past and past participle holocausted)

  1. (rare) To sacrifice and burn (an animal) completely.
    • 1986, Sylvia Brinton Perera, The Scapegoat Complex: Toward a Mythology of Shadow and Guilt:
      The Holocausted Goat
      Besides the condemning accuser, there is also the "holocausted goat," originally symbolizing libido sacrificed to the offended Yahweh.
    • 1987, Quadrant:
      The first was the holocausted goat, not worthy to live, who manifests in the modern complex as the helpless victim of pre-egoic consciousness. The second is the exiled wandering goat who carries all the denied instincts — sexuality, ...
    • 1997, Kathie Carlson, Life's Daughter/death's Bride: Inner Transformations Through the Goddess Demeter/Persephone, Shambhala Publications:
      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 […] ?
  2. (rare) To destroy completely, especially by fire.
    • 1850, George Townsend, Journal of a tour in Italy, in 1850, with an account of an interview with the pope, page 119:
      The meek and candid persecutor, Cardinal Pole, who killed and took possession when Cranmer was holocausted, built the chapel, and became the voucher for the truth of the absurd legend. We visited the reputed grotto of the nymph Egeria.
    • 1888, Southern California Practitioner, page 79:
      Sulla once said, before Caesar had made much of a showing, that some day this young man would be the ruin of the aristocracy, and twenty years afterward, when Caesar sacked, assassinated and holocausted a whole theological seminary […]
  3. (rare, possibly, nonstandard) To subject to a holocaust (mass annihilation); to destroy en masse. (Compare genocide.)
Holocaust
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ˈhɒləkɔːst/
  • (America) IPA: /ˈhɑləkɔst/
  • (cot-caught) IPA: /ˈhɑləkɑst/
Proper noun
  1. (historical, narrowly) The systematic mass murder (genocide) of 6 million Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany shortly before and during World War II.
  2. (historical, broadly) The systematic mass murder (democide) of 11 million people, namely 6 million Jews and 5 million others (including Romanis, Slavs, homosexuals, and people with physical and mental disabilities), perpetrated by Nazi Germany shortly before and during World War II.
Synonyms
  • (mass murder of 6 million Jews) Shoah
  • the Nazi genocide
Translations Translations Verb

holocaust (holocausts, present participle holocausting; past and past participle holocausted)

  1. altcaps en.


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