EXCOMMUNICATION

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does excommunication mean? 

• EXCOMMUNICATION (noun)
  The noun EXCOMMUNICATION has 2 senses:

1. the state of being excommunicated

2. the act of banishing a member of a church from the communion of believers and the privileges of the church; cutting a person off from a religious society

  Familiarity information: EXCOMMUNICATION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EXCOMMUNICATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being excommunicated

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

censure; exclusion; excommunication

Hypernyms ("excommunication" is a kind of...):

rejection (the state of being rejected)

Derivation:

excommunicate (exclude from a church or a religious community)

excommunicate (oust or exclude from a group or membership by decree)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of banishing a member of a church from the communion of believers and the privileges of the church; cutting a person off from a religious society

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

excision; excommunication

Hypernyms ("excommunication" is a kind of...):

banishment; proscription (rejection by means of an act of banishing or proscribing someone)

Derivation:

excommunicate (exclude from a church or a religious community)

 Context examples 

He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if I continued obdurate.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He rained upon it curses from God and High Heaven, and withered it with a heat of invective that savoured of a mediæval excommunication of the Catholic Church.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

As I did not care, however, to get to Highgate before one or two o'clock in the day, and as we had another little excommunication case in court that morning, which was called The office of the judge promoted by Tipkins against Bullock for his soul's correction, I passed an hour or two in attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For this we had an excommunication read against the man, when next we saw our holy father at Avignon; but as we had not his name, and knew nothing of him, save that he rode a dapple-gray roussin, I have feared sometimes that the blight may have settled upon the wrong man.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)