Other forms: sacrifices, sacrificed, sacrificing
A sacrifice is something you value that you give up so something more important can happen. A parent takes a second job and loses her evenings; a runner gives up bread and beer for a year to come in lighter.
Sacrifice is a verb too, spelled the same: you sacrifice your weekend, your savings, your seat in the boat. In religion it is the oldest sense — an animal or a gift killed or burned on an altar for a god. Chess players sacrifice a knight to open a line of attack, handing the piece over on purpose. You make a sacrifice, and you sacrifice something FOR something or FOR someone. Keep the word for things that cost you: you sacrifice a holiday to pay for the roof, but you cancel a meeting, you do not sacrifice it.
1nounsacrificeSomething valuable that you give up for the sake of something more important.~16%
“Her parents made real sacrifices to keep her at that school.”
2verbforgoTo give up something you value for the sake of something more important.~2%
“He sacrificed a promotion to stay in the same town as his daughter.”
3nounofferingAn animal, plant or object offered to a god, killed or burned on an altar.~76%
“The temple wall shows a bull being led forward as a sacrifice.”
synonyms: offering, oblation
4verbchessIn chess, to let your opponent take a piece on purpose, in return for a better position.~6%
“She sacrificed a knight to tear open the squares round his king.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
sacrifice is an act of giving something up.
Latin built the word out of two pieces: sacrum, sacred, and the verb faciō. A sacrificium was a thing made sacred and handed over to a god — an animal, food, a life. It reached English through Old French and Anglo-Norman sacrefiz as Middle English sacrifice, and the sacer behind it goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root *seh₂k-, ceremony, ritual, to make sacred.
Proto-Indo-European
*seh₂k-
Middle English
sacrifice
English, today
sacrifice
Built from
From Middle English sacrifice. From Middle English sacrifice (“act of offering a life or object to a deity; the life or object so offered”), from Anglo-Norman sacrefiz, and Old French sacrifice, sacrifise (modern French sacrifice), from Latin sacrificium (“something offered to a deity, sacrifice”), from sacrum + faciō + -ium. The noun sacrum is the nominalized neuter of the adjective sacer (“devoted to a deity for sacrifice; holy, sacred”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European seh₂k- (“ceremony, ritual; to make sacred”), and the verb faciō is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European dʰeh₁- (“to do; to place, put”). Related Latin formations include sacrificus (“of or pertaining to sacrifice, sacrificial”) and sacrificō (“to make a sacrifice”). Displaced native Old English blōt and hūsl. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA