What is "idolatrous"

Usage examples of "idolatrous".

But when they recollected the sanguinary list of murders, of executions, and of massacres, which stain almost every page of the Jewish annals, they acknowledged that the barbarians of Palestine had exercised as much compassion towards their idolatrous enemies, as they had ever shown to their friends or countrymen.

It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bakehouses the pyramids.

Grandma Yoder would have laughed at the concept of a ceramic goose with a bow around its neck, and she would have viewed as absolutely idolatrous the little Amish boy and girl figurines that are so popular in gift shops.

Here and there, in the depths of these awful shades, half screened from sight by masses of overhanging foliage, rose the idolatrous altars of the savages, built of enormous blocks of black and polished stone, placed one upon another, without cement, to the height of twelve or fifteen feet, and surmounted by a rustic open temple, enclosed with a low picket of canes, within which might be seen, in various stages of decay, offerings of bread-fruit and cocoanuts, and the putrefying relics of some recent sacrifice.

Wodehouse, for whose writings I have an idolatrous admiration, always prepared outlines, spending more time on them than on the book and getting every event, however small, firmly in place before beginning.

As soon as the severity of the persecution was abated, the doors of the churches were assailed by the returning multitude of penitents who detested their idolatrous submission, and who solicited with equal ardor, but with various success, their readmission into the society of Christians.

It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

They are common, however, to all the idolatrous inhabitants of the whole provinces of Cathay and Manji, amongst whom a physician is a rare character.

The Corona were fabled to be Menippe and Metioche, two daughters of Orion, who sacrificed themselves at the suggestion of an oracle, to protect Boeotia, their native country, from the ravages of a pestilence: it being the belief of idolatrous nations that an angry god could be propitiated by human sacrifices, and that the death of the innocent might atone for the sins of the guilty.

The wicked, idolatrous queen soon became the power behind the throne.

They never join their voices in praise, and it would seem that they are among the profanest of the idolatrous.