Hot Word of the Day: Immolate, Your Vocabulary Vitamin

How to demonstrate our Word of the Day: Throw yourself across a funeral pyre and set yourself ablaze. Now that's a hot word: Immolate.Hear it here

Today's Vocabulary Vitamin was heard on a talk show. The host said he hoped a certain someone wouldn't be immolated for his views. So your trusty Vocabulary Vitamin Lady immediately yanked open a dictionary and did a word search on immolate, thinking the word meant to deride, or criticize. Well, ratchet that up a notch: The word immolate means sacrifice. Burn at the stake. Kill, destroy. Do unto others as they did unto Joan of Arc.

This Word of the Day will burn you up.

Even though immolate has a lot of m's, like hmm, or umm, don't be fooled by those soft, indecisive little sounds. A word search of immolate in classic literature brings up countless examples of traitors being immolated, widows immolating themselves, bulls immolated to Jove or Neptune, and even horses immolated on the graves of young and courageous braves who die in battle. Immolate is hot all right. It's fiery, in fact.

Word of the day in literature:

Immolate as used by Charles Dickens in A Tale Of Two Cities

"That, he had been the prisoner's friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country."

The Vocabulary Vitamin as used by Cranmer-Byng, L. in A Lute of Jade

"It is the doctrine of eternal constancy, so dimly understood in the Western world, which bids the young wife immolate herself on her husband's tomb rather than marry again..." (There must be a better way to avoid remarriage. Ed.)

Even Ralph Waldo Emerson gobbled this Vocabulary Vitamin, and coughed it back up in Essays, Second Series

"What have I gained, that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble before the Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory...or the Calvinistic Judgment-day,--if I quake at opinion, the public opinion..." (Does he mean he had been in the habit of setting bulls and mice on fire?. . Ed.)

And the word of the day is also in The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper

"With a delicacy and consideration, that proved how much the generous qualities of the youth had touched the feelings of his people, a bow, a lance, and a quiver, were thrown across the animal, which it had been intended to immolate on the grave of the young brave... "

(Examples are from Free Dictionary.)

Today's Vocabulary Vitamin Word is: im• mo• late, verb

tr.v.im• mo• lat• ed, im• mo• lat• ing, im• mo• lates

1. To kill as a sacrifice.

2. To set (oneself) ablaze

3. To destroy.

immo• lationn.
immo• latorn.

"The group immolated themselves in protest of the government policies. "

[Latin immolare] [Latin immolre, immolt-, to sacrifice, sprinkle with sacrificial meal : in-, on; see in-² + mola, meal, millstone; see mel- in Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006