Sacrifice

How to spell sacrifice

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sacrifice

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sacrifice mean?

1. nounThe act of giving up something valued for the sake of something considered more important, or the thing so given up.
2. verbTo give up something valued for the sake of a more important aim.

Sacrifice in a sentence

• noun

  Buying their first home meant years of financial sacrifice.

• verb

  He was willing to sacrifice his weekends to finish the project on time.

• noun

  Her parents made every sacrifice so she could finish university.

• verb

  Many workers had to sacrifice their bonuses to keep the company afloat.

Where does sacrifice come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin sacrificium, which literally meant the making of something holy, built from sacer 'sacred' and facere 'to make or do'. In its earliest use it described the religious act of offering an animal or object to a god, an offering made sacred by the ritual itself. English took the word through Old French during the 1200s, where it kept its strong religious sense before broadening to mean any giving up of something valuable for the sake of a greater goal. The same sacer root survives in 'sacred', 'consecrate' and 'sacrament', while the facere half is the silent engine behind dozens of words such as 'manufacture' and 'fiction'. The spelling trap is the soft middle: the unstressed -ri- and the final -fice (sounded like 'fiss'), which tempt writers toward 'sacrafice' or 'sacrefise'.

How the word is built

• sacr- (sacred, holy)
• -i- (connecting vowel)
• -fice (from Latin facere: to make/do)