Word Finder - superstitious

definition

Susceptible to superstitions.

definition

Arising from or having the character of superstitions.

definition

Overexact; unnecessarily scrupulous

He was extremely superstitious, and believed in invocations of the dead.

The mullahs or priests enjoy very great influence, but the people are very superstitious, believing in witchcraft, omens, spirits and the evil eye.

In his antipathy to Christianity, which appears to him barbaric and superstitious, he gives himself up to the scepticism and satire of a man of the world through which he comes in contact with Epicurean tendencies."

An immense joy in battle breathes through the earliest Norse literature, which has scarce its like in any other literature; and we know that the language recognized a peculiar battle fury, a veritable madness by which certain were seized and which went by the name of " berserk's way " (berserksgangr).2 The courage of the vikings was proof against anything, even as a rule against superstitious terrors.

In that year the Great Fire of London, following on the Great Plague, roused the superstitious fears of the people, and the House of Commons embodied the general feeling in a bill against atheism and profaneness.

He was a great admirer of Galen; and in his writings he protests emphatically against quackery and the superstitious remedies of the astrologers.

Ridsdale, 1876 (1 P. & D., 316), a metal crucifix on the centre of the chancel screen was declared illegal as being in danger of being used superstitiously, and in the same case pictures or rather coloured reliefs representing the "Stations of the Cross" were ordered to be removed on the ground that they had been erected without a faculty, and were also considered unlawful by Lord Penzance as connected with certain superstitious devotion authorized by the Roman church.

The subordination of reason to a sense of superstitious fanaticism is the keynote of his character, and largely the explanation of his life.

First let me say, we're not superstitious.

Napier lived, too, not only in a wild country, which was in a lawless and unsettled state during most of his life, but also in a credulous and superstitious age.

The people were very superstitious, they believed in most things they have only heard of.

The superstitious associations of crystal-gazing, as of hypnotism, appear to bar the way to official scientific investigation, and the fluctuating proficiency of the seers, who cannot command success, or determine the causes and conditions of success and failure, tends in the same direction.

He was recklessly impetuous in his temperament, coarse and grossly superstitious according to modern standards.

There is probably a superstitious reason for the preference shown by the dead for offerings of this kind; no wish is commoner than that one may receive bread and beer that had gone up on to the altar of the local god, or with which the god had been sated; something of the divine sanctity still clung about such offerings and made them particularly desirable.

In addition, some cultures are quite superstitious.

Among the savage tribes of the interior there is scarcely any idea of God and their superstitious practices can scarcely be considered as the expression of a definite religious idea.

Barton turned out afterwards to have been an impostor, but she had duped More, who now lived in a superstitious atmosphere of convents and churches, and he had given his countenance to her supernatural pretensions.

It conditions someone to cling to superstitious beliefs or to be excited about auspicious signs.

Theists ' beliefs are based on superstitious nonsense with little or no basis in reality.

It was an austere religion, inculcating self-restraint, courage and honesty; it secured peace of conscience through forgiveness of sins, and abated for those who were initiated in its mysteries the superstitious terrors of death and the world to come.

During the breeding season it utters a booming noise, from which it probably derives its generic name, Botaurus, and which has made it in many places an object of superstitious dread.

The plan of the work is good and, in spite of its fables and superstitious absurdities, contains important facts which would otherwise have been unknown.

I am the least superstitious of men, but it drew me.

They are a wild race but mild-mannered, very superstitious, and pride themselves on their skill as doctors.

The Laos are very superstitious, believe in wer-wolves, and that all diseases are.

It is not easy to determine what gifts are to be regarded as gifts to superstitious uses.

The court may compel discovery of a secret trust for superstitious uses.

He was also extremely superstitious, and believed in invocations of the dead.

Around the 18th century a more superstitious belief was related to wedding cakes.

First let me say, we 're not superstitious.

They are also the direct antitheses to the scepticism of Montaigne and Pascal, to the materialism of Gassendi and Hobbes, and to the superstitious anthropomorphism which defaced the reawakening sciences of nature.

The members accidentally discovered that the fear of it had a great influence over the lawless but superstitious blacks, and soon the club expanded into a great federation of regulators, absorbing numerous local bodies that had been formed in the absence of civil law and partaking of the nature of the old English neighbourhood police and the ante-bellum slave patrol.

The noises made by some Ptinidae (Anobium) tapping on the walls of their burrows with their mandibles give rise to the "death tick" that has for long alarmed the superstitious.

But he displays a superstitious regard for miracles and prophecies; he has nothing to say against the arbitrary acts of the emperors, which he seems to take as a matter of course; and his work, although far more than a mere compilation, is not remarkable for impartiality, vigour of judgment or critical historical faculty.

As indicated by its name, which means " burnt," it is of volcanic origin, and plays an important part in the folklore and in the superstitious legends of the Hungarian people.

The strength of the priesthood in Chaldaea and in Egypt stands plainly in the closest connexion with the survival of a magical element in the state religion, and Rome, in like manner, is more priestly than Greece, because it is more superstitious.

They began with the convents, and Oecolampadius was able to refrain in public worship on certain festival days from some practices he believed to be superstitious.

In general, the people are lively, good-humoured and ready-witted, fond of pleasure, lazy and extremely superstitious.

About 403, some years after his return from the East, Vigilantius wrote his celebrated work against superstitious practices, in which he argued against relic worship, as also against the vigils in the basilicas of the martyrs, then so common, the sending of alms to Jerusalem, the rejection of earthly goods and the attribution of special virtue to the unmarried state, especially in the case of the clergy.

They deal for the most part with the hearing of diseases, the bites of snakes and scorpions, &c., but incidentally cast many sidelights on the mythology and superstitious beliefs.

Augustus was a covetous, cruel and superstitious man, but these qualities were redeemed by his political caution and his wise methods of government.

The Berbers, if irreligious, are very superstitious, never leaving their homes without exorcizing evil spirits, and have a good and evil interpretation for every day of the week.

Such cases are, of course, exceptional, and generally refer to a period long past, but they explain and justify the superstitious awe with which the tiger is regarded by the natives.

Religion is always the original pretext of these gatherings or melas, at some of which nothing is done beyond bathing in the river, or performing various superstitious ceremonies.

That the transmigration theory, which makes the spirit of the departed hover about for a time in quest of a new corporeal abode, would naturally lend itself to superstitious notions of this kind can scarcely be doubted.

At the same time one also meets with frank avowals of a superstitious fear lest any irregularity in the performance of the obsequial rites should cause the Fathers to haunt their old home and trouble the peace of their undutiful descendant, or even prematurely draw him after them to the Pitri-loka or world of the Fathers, supposed to be located in the southern region.

Many were only kept back from going to church ` by the fear that their neighbours would think them superstitious or narrow-minded.

Within the Catholic body itself there was even at this time a more or less pronounced anti-Roman movement, a reflection of the Gallican and Febronian tendencies on the continent of Europe, and the " Catholic Committee," consisting for the most part of influential laymen, which had been formed to negotiate with the government, was prepared to go a long 1 This declaration, which denounced the mass as " idolatrous and superstitious," was taken by all office-bearers, including bishops on taking their seats in the House of Lords, until the Relief Act of 1829.

The act may still be of value in the construction of old grants, and in affording examples of what the legislature regarded as superstitious uses.

The Roman Catholic Charities Act 1860 enables the court to separafe a lawful charitable trust from any part of the estate subject to any trust or provision deemed to be superstitious.