SUPERSTITION • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Superstition

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/sˌupərstˈɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Superstition n.

1.

An excessive reverence for, or fear of, that which is unknown or mysterious.

2.

An ignorant or irrational worship of the Supreme Deity; excessive exactness or rigor in religious opinions or practice; extreme and unnecessary scruples in the observance of religious rites not commanded, or of points of minor importance; also, a rite or practice proceeding from excess of sculptures in religion. "And the truth With superstitions and traditions taint."

3.

The worship of a false god or gods; false religion; religious veneration for objects. "(The accusers) had certain questions against him of their own superstition."

4.

Belief in the direct agency of superior powers in certain extraordinary or singular events, or in magic, omens, prognostics, or the like.

5.

Excessive nicety; scrupulous exactness.

Synonyms: Fanaticism. Superstition, Fanaticism. Superstition springs from religious feeling misdirected or unenlightened. Fanaticism arises from this same feeling in a state of high-wrought and self-confident excitement. The former leads in some cases to excessive rigor in religious opinions or practice; in others, to unfounded belief in extraordinary events or in charms, omens, and prognostics, hence producing weak fears, or excessive scrupulosity as to outward observances. The latter gives rise to an utter disregard of reason under the false assumption of enjoying a guidance directly inspired. Fanaticism has a secondary sense as applied to politics, etc., which corresponds to the primary.

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Etymology of 'Superstition'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Superstition" Quotes from Famous Books

... pleasure and early philosophies were the chief concerns of life. Yet the poems continued to be aristocratic in manners; and, in religion and ritual, to be pure from recrudescences of savage poetry and superstition, though the Ionians "did not drop the more primitive phases of belief which had clung to them; these rose to the surface with the rest of the marvellous Ionic genius, and many an ancient survival was enshrined in the literature ...

— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... the discovery of their loss; but later and more careful investigation, such as his woodcraft made possible, revealed indisputable evidence of a more material explanation than his excited fancy and superstition had at first ...

— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Norwich, A.D. 1728, by Mr. Thomas Kirkpatrick, merchant there, and was bound at the expence of Isaac Preston, Esq., 1742, that it might the better be preserv'd being an Authentick & antient Evidence of the extravagant Foppery and Superstition of the Church of Rome, & of the necessity of the Reformation. Vide the Commandments page ye 20th in the ...

— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen

... France are in most material points not more civilised than they were in the second century of our era. The reign of law and justice has no doubt extended into the reign of hyperborean ice and over Sarmatian plains: but then Spain, has relapsed into a double barbarism by engrafting Catholic superstition upon Iberian ferocity. If we look Eastward, we see a horde of barbarians in occupation of the garden of the Old World, not as settlers, but as destroyers (Age of Reason, in Fortnightly Review, ...

— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... had cracked the creed of popes and princes, there was a general demand for a new version and translation of the Bible, cutting out the Catholicism of the old book and expurgating the vulgarity and superstition engrafted on the "Word of God" by the apostles and bishops of the first, second and third centuries, after Christ had been crucified for the ...

— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

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