(v. t.) To call upon divine or supernatural power to send injury upon; to imprecate evil upon; to execrate.
(v. t.) To bring great evil upon; to be the cause of serious harm or unhappiness to; to furnish with that which will be a cause of deep trouble; to afflict or injure grievously; to harass or torment.
(v. i.) To utter imprecations or curses; to affirm or deny with imprecations; to swear.
(v. t.) An invocation of, or prayer for, harm or injury; malediction.
(v. t.) Evil pronounced or invoked upon another, solemnly, or in passion; subjection to, or sentence of, divine condemnation.
(v. t.) The cause of great harm, evil, or misfortune; that which brings evil or severe affliction; torment.
Example Sentences:
(1) But it was also a portrait of an England charged with secrets - and, as Michael Billington put it, the work of an accomplished playwright who understood the English curse of 'emotional evasion.'
(2) A new, terrible curse that comes on top of the bleaching, the battering, the poisoning and the pollution.
(3) She comes from the "cursed" political dynasty in Pakistan : her grandfather, the former president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed in 1979, three years before Fatima was born; her father, the radical politician Murtaza Bhutto, was shot dead by police in 1996; and her aunt, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed in a bombing in 2007.
(4) It has somehow managed to escape the curse of Murdoch, who partly owns it.
(5) But it accused South Park of having mocked the prophet, and cited Islamic scholars who ruled that "whoever curses the messenger of Allah must be killed".
(6) Now they await the results of the American League Championship Series to see whether this year's World Series will be a rematch of 2004, when the Cardinals were swept by the curse-reversing Boston Red Sox, or 2006, when the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers and became one of the worst teams to win the World Series in MLB history .
(7) Several survivors and family members of the victims who were flown to the US testified this week , and one cursed Bales for attacking villagers as some slept and others screamed for mercy.
(8) The bakers can freeze each layer as it goes on, tensely waiting by the ice box, cursing under their breath.
(9) Still alive, he was then surrounded by people who cursed and spat at him, kicked him in the head and tried to hit him with a chair.
(10) How they got here You'll be forgiven if you thought they were still cursed, if you had been following recent baseball history.
(11) Not a Lynyrd Skynyrd "doom will plague you at every turn" sort of curse, it must be said; more a sequence of mildly irritating events.
(12) In 1 infant diagnosed with Ondine's curse, examination showed diffuse neuronal loss and gliosis in the medullary tegmentum.
(13) Since then, the cursing and sobbing have been plentiful.
(14) Maguwu said: "To me it's very clear the diamonds have been a curse to this country.
(15) As Taylor cursed, McClaren embarked on a tactical rejig.
(16) The curse of playing Ari Gold is that Jeremy Piven may have to spend the rest of his life trying to convince the world he is not a rage-fuelled blustering asshole.
(17) They managed to catch two people, aged no more than 30, and were beating them up badly, swearing at them all the time and cursing the Shia clerics, saying: "Where is al-Khomeini now?
(18) It would swirl around that child's head in the manner of a bad fairy from a storybook bringing along a cursed gift to a christening.
(19) Infantile delivery also frequently serves to take the curse off self-publicity; sleight of hand for those who find "my programme is on BBC2 tonight" too presumptuous and exposing, and prefer to cower behind the low-status imbecility of "I done rote a fingy for da tellybox!"
(20) This discovered gothic quality within everyday life found one of its finest expressions in the American work of French-born director Jacques Tourneur , especially the brilliant Cat People (1943), Curse of the Cat People (1944) and Night of the Demon (1957).
Deprecation
Definition:
(n.) The act of deprecating; a praying against evil; prayer that an evil may be removed or prevented; strong expression of disapprobation.
(n.) Entreaty for pardon; petitioning.
(n.) An imprecation or curse.
Example Sentences:
(1) "I cannot tell you how I should deprecate anything leading to the publication of these letters," she clucked to her publisher.
(2) Low degrees of role interference is likewise disconcerting to persons but in the absence of an external target for aggression may lead to self deprecation and ultimately suicide.
(3) Despite the sometimes self-deprecating shtick – in sharp contrast to Putin's self-mythologising antics – there remains disquiet about what Navalny really represents, behind the caustic put-downs and cool persona.
(4) Stone’s depiction of himself in his book tallies well with Bilton’s: self-deprecating, a peacemaker, but also someone who gets things done.
(5) Her newspaper profiles over the years are peppered with self-deprecating references to her sporting ruthlessness: her constant mentions of her selfishness and egotism; her win-at-all-costs, only-gold-medals-matter mentality; or the time she flung her helmet at her boyfriend in frustration after losing a race.
(6) This was a galaxy-spanning utopia whose name was chosen for its self-deprecating modesty, rather than something grandiose like the Federation or the Empire.
(7) He reads out deprecating messages: "Loving the show, even the little mistakes," "Sounds like you're on some ITV sitcom in the 80s."
(8) But this was still very much hero worship, northern-style: the 100 or so Werder Bremen fans stood in orderly rows in the Bremen airport arrivals hall in early September, strictly behind the barrier, of course, and many of them carried smiles that were equal parts genuine, childlike excitement and self-deprecating mocking of their own genuine, childlike excitement, a way to cope with the sense of wonderment: are we really here?
(9) Johnson is the master-builder of that image, deflecting every lie, every gaffe, dishonesty and U-turn with some self-deprecating metaphor: calling his feigned indecision “veering all over the place like a shopping trolley” was worth a world of worthy platitudes.
(10) But he uses what he learned from Rantzen: she taught him, he said somewhat self-deprecatingly, the “tricks of trash journalism.
(11) Whether she's pitching her own feminist rap video or reading us her cautionary rewrite of The Ugly Duckling, her self-deprecating anecdotal style invites us to laugh at her middle-class embarrassment while she slips some important truths past.
(12) Like Diana, Prince Philip has tended to be self-deprecating on the subject of his education ("I am one of those ignorant bastards who never went to a university").
(13) The use of AAS as ergogenic drugs must be deprecated because of their marginal effects, the risks of side effects and the unsporting, unethical aspects.
(14) Now the self-deprecating circular is fashionable, and we've had a few this year.
(15) Linked with a self-deprecating acknowledgement that our own fallibility and imperfection is likely to be exposed, we at least introduce a modicum of suspicion to our consumption of dominant media and political narratives.
(16) When the intensity of the noise increased to 70 and 75dB SPL, speech discrimination scores by both devices deprecated together with consistent difference (P less than 0.01).
(17) Cat videos aside, there’s an unspoken war going on – who can be the funniest, who can be the cleverest, who has the most amusingly self-deprecating hangover.
(18) For all the shared self-deprecating glee, nobody really knows what to expect.
(19) Briers, always the most modest and self-deprecating of actors, and the sweetest of men, relished the review, happy to claim a place in the light comedians' gallery of his knighted idols Charles Hawtrey, Gerald du Maurier and Noël Coward.
(20) Polypharmacy is deprecated and either an aminoglycoside or a cephalosporin forms the mainstay of therapy.