What is "propitiatory"

Usage examples of "propitiatory".

When a man of note was dangerously ill, a family council would be held, at which it might be agreed that a circumcision should take place as a propitiatory measure.

The places which these vagrant souls loved to haunt were known to the people, who in passing by them were wont to make propitiatory offerings of food or cloth.

Well, I must have stood fol some minutes in front of Deiphobe, shivering and making propitiatory grimaces-it seemed a lifetime.

After a propitiatory sacrifice to Neptune-a seal, because that is an amphibious beast-and another, a peacock, to Envy, in case, as he said, any God should be jealous of him, he mounted on Incitatus and began trotting across the bridge from the Bauli end.

He understood sufficient of it to assure himself that this Mayan off-shoot practised no bloody rites, and that the only propitiatory offerings required by Aak, were green herbage and spring water.

All seemed grimly appropriate, terrifically real--the darkness of the temple, the black shrouds of the devotees, the absence of any altar or propitiatory offering beneath the bare triangular symbol--for what offering short of life itself can be acceptable to the Lord of Death?

It was as though the insulted gods of Aca had carefully planned her destruction, and were offering her up as a propitiatory victim to the dread Four-Footed Serpent, whose hideous presence seemed to dominate this scene of sacrifice.

Nikki, reaching out a propitiatory hand, but Jessie was up and through the door before she could be touched.

Shadow is worshipped there, though with cautious and propitiatory rites enacted at the dark of the Moon.

When I think of Bamtz, the first thing I see is that long black beard and a lot of propitiatory wrinkles at the corners of two little eyes.

One could well understand primitive early races making propitiatory sacrifices to the spirit of a great river on whose shores they dwelt.

She got the agent to put ropes on them in the first place, and Kathleen and Louise, cautiously advancing to the plank, held up propitiatory offerings of grass.

But, far from feeling any of the pity which softens the hearts of the profane, Paphnutius rejoiced at these propitiatory sufferings of the flesh which had so sinned.

The maiden sees in this a punishment meted out by Venus and offers herself as a propitiatory sacrifice.

For one wild moment I thought she was going to walk out onto the plaza and present herself as some kind of propitiatory sacrifice.