Word Finder - estrange

definition

To cause to feel less close or friendly; alienate. To cease contact with (particularly of a family member or spouse, especially in form estranged).

definition

To remove from an accustomed place or set of associations.

In the four years and a half during which his ministry had lasted he had done much to estrange his party.

He had no sooner done so than he bitterly repented his weakness; and acting, as he himself says, on the principle that " to take an oath which never ought to have been taken is to estrange one's self from God, but to retract what one has wrongfully sworn to, is to return back to God," when he got safe again into France he attacked the transubstantiation theory more vehemently than ever.

The open protection it accorded to the Old Catholic movement contributed in no small measure to estrange those influential elements which, whilst favouring the suppression of Ultramontane tendencies, desired no schism in the Church, and viewed with horror the idea of a National Church in Bismarck's sense (see OLD Catholics).

His inward break with Jewish orthodoxy dated, no doubt, further back - from his acquaintance with the philosophical theologians and commentators of the middle ages; but these new interests combined to estrange him still further from the traditions of the synagogue.

The Madrid foreign office welcomed most readily a clever move of Prince Bismarcks to estrange Spain from France and to flatter the young king of Spain.