Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
potter 's field, said to have lain south ofJerusalem ,purchased with thebribe which Judas took forbetraying his master, and therefore called the field of blood. - noun figuratively A field of
bloodshed .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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So that we may rather admire, that the Lord hath not made such inquisition for blood, as to make our land an aceldama, than that we are yet under a dispensation of divine forbearance.
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Turn it which way you will, it rolls into the primrose path of dalliance, whose objective point is the aceldama.
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And this, then, was the regiment -- a regiment already for some hours glorified and hallowed to the ear of all London, as lying stretched, by a large majority, upon one bloody aceldama -- in which the young trooper served whose mother was now talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusiasm.
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All known and respectable publishers having declined any connexion with the work, the writers had facetiously resorted to this _aceldama_, or slaughtering quarter of London -- to these vast shambles, as typical, I suppose, of their own slaughtering spirit.
The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg
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Christendom should be a field of blood, an aceldama, beyond other places of the world, that where the gospel is pretended to be received, that men have so far put off even humanity, as thus to bite and devour one another.
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_aceldama_, though all was done that could be to save life and alleviate suffering.
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Latterly, indeed, it had become apparent that entire winter campaigns, without either formal suspensions of hostilities, or even partial relaxations, had entered professedly as a point of policy into the system of warfare which now swept over Germany in full career, threatening soon to convert its vast central provinces -- so recently blooming Edens of peace and expanding prosperity -- into a howling wilderness; and which had already converted immense tracts into one universal aceldama, or human shambles, reviving to the recollection at every step the extent of past happiness in the endless memorials of its destruction.
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Latterly, indeed, it had become apparent that entire winter campaigns, without either formal suspensions of hostilities, or even partial relaxations, had entered professedly as a point of policy into the system of warfare which now swept over Germany in full career, threatening soon to convert its vast central provinces -- so recently blooming Edens of peace and expanding prosperity -- into a howling wilderness; and which had already converted immense tracts into one universal aceldama, or human shambles, reviving to the recollection at every step the extent of past happiness in the endless memorials of its destruction.
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"wings with dreadful shade contiguous," and fills the land with tears of blood -- you look over this frightful _aceldama_ and mourn at the soul-chilling spectacle.
A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco
whichbe commented on the word aceldama
A field of bloodshed.
May 11, 2008
milosrdenstvi commented on the word aceldama
Originally akel-dama, field of blood, in Aramaic. In the Bible, Judas bought a field with the money he received from betraying Jesus, then, overcome with guilt, hanged himself above it, after which his body fell and burst open, and this name was given to it. Now chiefly poetical.
August 21, 2008