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Ablution   Listen
noun
Ablution  n.  
1.
The act of washing or cleansing; specifically, the washing of the body, or some part of it, as a religious rite.
2.
The water used in cleansing. "Cast the ablutions in the main."
3.
(R. C. Ch.) A small quantity of wine and water, which is used to wash the priest's thumb and index finger after the communion, and which then, as perhaps containing portions of the consecrated elements, is drunk by the priest.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ablution" Quotes from Famous Books



... excellent partner actually climbed into a bath, the more satisfactorily to emphasize its advantages. As he sat there, faithfully reproducing the various movements of the arms, universally, I suppose, employed in the process of ablution, the living picture which he presented, put an obviously severe strain upon the gravity of my companion. And when, in response to a daringly ingenuous thirst for intelligence on my part, he proceeded to demonstrate the comparative ease with which a left-handed bather, suffering ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... very uncomfortable sensation when she heard him lock the door behind him. A prisoner, with such a jailer! With a quick movement of disgust, she rushed to the water-basin and washed her lips and her hands; but she felt that the stain was one no ablution could remove. The sense of degradation was so cruelly bitter, that it seemed to her as if she should die for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... upon him; the countrywoman herself seemed astonished. At length he raised his dripping head. This ablution had partly dispelled his drunkenness; he looked at us for a moment, then he turned to Genevieve, and ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... water washes away sin. Nor [do we agree] with Scotus and the Barefooted monks [Minorites or Franciscan monks], who teach that, by the assistance of the divine will, Baptism washes away sins, and that this ablution occurs only through the will of God, and by no means through the Word or water. Of the baptism of children we hold that children ought to be baptized. For they belong to the promised redemption made through Christ, and ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther

... from the great heat of the bath. So they took their ease there and ate and drank and passed that night in perfect solace and satisfaction, till morning dawned, when they arose from sleep and making their lesser ablution, prayed the dawn- prayer and drank the morning draught.[FN27] As soon as the sun had risen and the shops and markets opened, they arose and going forth from their place to the bazar opened their shop, which their servants ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Sunny was forced to an unwilling ablution, which, by strategy, he had hoped to escape. However, the ordeal was manfully borne, and his reward was quite worth his trouble. Vada promptly exclaimed when she saw his face emerge from the dirty towel, shining ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... apartments—are fitted up so luxuriously that each tenant has his own individual tiled bathroom, which he uses also as a dressing room. But where these are not, the tin or the India-rubber bath tub serves as well the purpose of our first ablution. A cold bath to many is a good refresher and awakener, but there are others again whose constitutions can not stand the shock, especially in winter, of icy-cold water. For cleansing purposes, tepid water is best, or a mixture of hot and cold, so as ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... novelty, they embraced the proposal with pleasure, and followed the men to the distance of about a mile from their house. Here they observed a number of Mahommedans sitting in detached groups, actively employed in the duties of lustration and ablution. It was a bare space of ground, edged with trees, and covered with sand. The Mussulmans were obliged to bring water with them in calabashes. Seated in a convenient situation, under the spreading branches of a myrtle tree, the two travellers could observe, without being seen, all the actions of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... Saxons, long prior to the Conquest; at which period our first William is shown by Mr. Anstey, to have been in the habit of bestowing it both in his Norman and English dominions. The candidate for that honour was required to keep his vigils with great strictness, after a previous ablution from which the name of the order is derived, and which were together meant to indicate the moral purity required of him; as the motto "Tria juncta in uno" implied a peculiar devotion to the ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... water for ablution is another annoyance to the American traveler accustomed to the hot-and cold-water faucets introduced into private bed-rooms and hotel apartments, and the capacious bath-tubs and unlimited control of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... Affairs of one particular nation: beside these, however, there are others; but since all of their characteristics may be acquired by letting the clothes alone, never interfering with the hair, abstaining from the practice of ablution, and smoking German pipes about the streets, they are hardly worth dwelling upon. Those who have light and somewhat shaggy locks will study such models with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... wants. Christ did penance forty days in the wilderness, not to subdue His own flesh, for that which was already perfect did not need subduing, but to give to penance a cleansing virtue to serve for our daily or our hourly ablution. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... manner of the early Egyptian priests, subjecting himself to much ablution and shaving; eating little but bread, vegetables, and poultry, and abstaining from pulse and the flesh of all beasts—not merely of the prohibited animal, swine; wearing nothing but pure linen clothing, and setting ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers



Words linked to "Ablution" :   washing, ritual, ablutionary, lavation



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