Word.ws English Dictionary

piaculous

piaculous is the obsolete form of piacular.

Meaning of piacular

Adjective

piacular (comparative more piacular, superlative most piacular)

  1. Requiring atonement or reparation: wicked, sinful, bad.
    • And while we think it ſo piaculous, to go beyond the Ancients; we muſt neceſſarily come ſhort of genuine Antiquity, Truth; unleſs we ſuppoſe them to have reach'd perfection of Knowlege in ſpight of their own acknowledgments of Ignorance.1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica: or, Contest Ignorance, the way to Science […], London: […], Chapter XVII, page 103
  2. Expiatory; serving to atone.
    • The piacular sacrifice arose from the need of atoning for bloodshed within the kinship group ; properly speaking, the culprit himself should suffer : should he be unknown or beyond the reach of vengeance, a substitute had to be found[…]1911, Hugh Chisholm, The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, page 981

Forms of piaculous

comparativemore piaculous
superlativemost piaculous

Questions about piaculous

What is piaculous the obsolete form of?
Piaculous is the obsolete form of piacular.

Words near piaculous in the dictionary

  1. piacular
  2. piacularities
  3. piacularity
  4. piacularly
  5. piaculative
  6. piaculous
  7. piaculum
  8. piadina
  9. piadinas
  10. piadine
  11. Piaf

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piaculous (page history and authors); piacular (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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Cite this entry: “piaculous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/piaculous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.