Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A high-ranking Shiite religious authority regarded as worthy of imitation in matters of religious law and interpretation.
- noun Used as a title for such a leader.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
religious leader inIranian Shi’ite Islam ; a member of the’ulama .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a high-ranking Shiite religious leader who is regarded as an authority on religious law and its interpretation and who has political power as well
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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His successor, Ali Khamenei, also a fighter against the shah rather than a religious authority, was hastily "promoted" to the title ayatollah in order to become supreme leader.
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And a prime example of this would be Iran … The ayatollah is both the religious leader and the political leader.
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And a prime example of this would be Iran … The ayatollah is both the religious leader and the political leader.
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And to call the ayatollah's words lame propaganda ignores the fact that it is so effective in rallying our enemies.
"This defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation." Ann Althouse 2006
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He said we were doing business with the government of Iran—in other words, the ayatollah himself—and that we were trading arms for hostages.
An American Life Ronald Reagan 1990
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He said we were doing business with the government of Iran—in other words, the ayatollah himself—and that we were trading arms for hostages.
An American Life Ronald Reagan 1990
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He said we were doing business with the government of Iran—in other words, the ayatollah himself—and that we were trading arms for hostages.
An American Life Ronald Reagan 1990
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He said we were doing business with the government of Iran—in other words, the ayatollah himself—and that we were trading arms for hostages.
An American Life Ronald Reagan 1990
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"Thanks to fiction I can, for example, kill an ayatollah, which is something you cannot do in real life," Nahapetian said at the "Semana Negra" crime-writing festival, attended by a million people every year in Gijon, northern Spain.
Reuters: Top News 2011
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The ayatollah was a strong critic of US policy in the Middle East
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