the Inquisition

noun

: an organization in the Roman Catholic Church in the past that was responsible for finding and punishing people who did not accept its beliefs and practices

the Spanish Inquisition

Examples of the Inquisition in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In 2016, after a reedy Canadian professor named Jordan Peterson refused to use gender-neutral pronouns, he was taken up as a folk hero, like Galileo standing firm against the Inquisition. —Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 17 Mar. 2025

The painting features robust, muscular figures in the style of Michelangelo and references the Klan, Nazism, torture, communism, and the Inquisition, evident in such forms as a swastika, hooded figures, a cross, and a hammer and sickle. —News Desk, Artforum, 3 Feb. 2025

Because church doctrine held that Earth was the center of the universe, the Inquisition compelled the astronomer Galileo to recant his belief that our planet orbits the sun. —Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 25 Nov. 2024

Initially, the Jews came from Spain during the Inquisition. —Shoshana Brower, Sun Sentinel, 12 Aug. 2024

Many were interrogated and and at least one was executed by being burned at the stake during the Inquisition. —Joanne M. Pierce, The Conversation, 30 July 2024

But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. —Sarah Yang, Sunset Magazine, 19 Mar. 2024

And once again he was called before the Inquisition—this time he was found guilty of heresy. —Melissa Breyer, Treehugger, 19 June 2023

Among the scores of people Sherwin also interviewed were Haakon Chevalier, Oppenheimer’s onetime best friend whose Communist ties in part formed the basis of the inquisition against him, and Edward Teller, whose testimony at the 1954 hearing helped end his career. —Andy Kifer, New York Times, 11 July 2023

Rhymes for the Inquisition

• academician
• cycloaddition
• decomposition
• diagnostician
• disinhibition
• indisposition
• interposition
• juxtaposition
• mathematician
• metacognition
• metaphysician
• neurotransmission