propitiate

present singular third person propitiates · participle present propitiating · participle past propitiated · past propitiated

1. transitiveTo conciliate, appease, or make peace with someone, particularly a god or spirit.

   But polite and politic it is, to propitiate your hostess.

   1849, Herman Melville, chapter 25, in Mardi, Vol. 2

   4 more examples

   Let fierce Achilles, dreadful in his rage, The god propitiate, and the pest assuage.

   1720, Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, Book 1, lines 191-192

   [H]e heard . . . one of the soldiers singing as he cleaned his rifle—the men always sang over this business, as if to propitiate the gun god.

   1910, Henry De Vere Stacpoole, chapter 30, in The Pools of Silence

   The androgynous creative deity was best supplicated or propitiated by offerings concerned with the pleasures of the flesh. In such circumstances, to the worshipper as to the god, licentiousness was not a sin: on the contrary, it was a duty.

   1941, George Ryley Scott, Phallic Worship: A History of Sex and Sex Rites in Relation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the Present Day, London: T. Werner Laurie, page xi

   By saying unequivocally that conscription is not an option, the Bush administration and the Rumsfeld Pentagon, while propitiating the ghost of Vietnam, are also profiting from the success of the all-volunteer military.

   2001 September 30, Thom Shanker, “Who Will Fight This War?”, in New York Times, retrieved 21 Apr 2015

   Synonyms: appease

2. transitiveTo make propitious or favourable.

   1 more example

   But what was that compared to the pleasure of gazing on him, and listening to his words of pity or of praise! to witnessing the sparkling of his eyes when he gazed on his boy, and sought, by every possible medium, to coax him to his arms, a task not to be achieved in a moment; or in listening to that praise of Lord Allerton, which was likely to propitiate Mary in his favour!

   1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter L, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 19

3. intransitiveTo make propitiation.

   Synonyms: atone