Word.ws English Dictionary

piacularity

piacularity noun: the quality of being piacular, of requiring atonement.

Noun

piacularity (usually uncountable, plural piacularities)

  1. (usually) The quality of being piacular, of requiring atonement.
    • [I]t illustrates a profound but obscure idea of pagan ages, which is connected with the elementary glimpses of man into the abysses of his higher relations, and lurks mysteriously amongst what Milton so finely calls "the dark foundations" of our human nature. This notion, it is hard to express in...1849, Thomas De Quincey "The Theban Sphinx", page 141, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, volume 6, edited by David Masson, published 1890, by A. & C. Black
    • Adam Smith also dwells on the closely related phenomenon of piacularity; a man who has unintentionally brought about the death or serious injury of another man will feel 'piacular', and spend the rest of his life trying to make up for it […]1978, JBSP: The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

Forms of piacularity

pluralpiacularities

Origin of piacularity

From Latin piaculariter (“by way of atonement; sinfully”), piacularius (“atoning, expiatory”) from piaculo (“to appease or propitiate with an offering”). See pius (“dutiful”).

Questions about piacularity

What does piacularity mean?
Piacularity means the quality of being piacular, of requiring atonement.
What part of speech is piacularity?
Piacularity is a noun.
What is the plural of piacularity?
The plural of piacularity is piacularities.

Words near piacularity in the dictionary

  1. piacle
  2. piacles
  3. piacula
  4. piacular
  5. piacularities
  6. piacularity
  7. piacularly
  8. piaculative
  9. piaculous
  10. piaculum
  11. piadina

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piacularity (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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