How to Use expiation in a Sentence

expiation

noun

• Afterward, as expiation, the pool was filled in and transformed into a Zen garden, now part of the Bloedel Reserve.
  — David Gilbert, The New Yorker, 4 June 2017
• Poetry served as an offering to the dead, a form of expiation, a hope for redemption.
  — Edward Hirsch, New Republic, 30 June 2017
• What’s more, the film goes beyond who did what into matters of intention and expiation.
  — Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 9 May 2018
• That no further expiation of the nation’s sins would be necessary.
  — Graham Hillard, National Review, 22 July 2019
• The music and the movement enacted a ritual of sonic expiation, a freedom born in sound.
  — Adam Bradley Adam Bradley Photographs By D’angelo Lovell Williams Styled By Ian Bradley Nick Haramis Photographs By Lise Sarfati Styled By Suzanne Koller Sasha Weiss Photographs By Justin French Susan Dominus Photographs By Luis Alberto Rodriguez Styled By Charlotte Collet, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2022
• For her, its conventions enabled catharsis, the expiation of fear of the unknown—as embodied by the serial killer who stalks the pages of this work whistling hymns and wrapping his dog’s leash around the necks of five women.
  — WSJ, 30 Mar. 2018
• Redemption wasn’t quite possible for Lee, but there was expiation for the actor.
  — Christian Lorentzen, New Republic, 5 July 2017
• Dickie takes it upon himself to look out for the boy—all the more so since Dickie, having recently committed a murder, seems seized with guilt and hopes for expiation through good works.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 1 Oct. 2021
• In a vain attempt to ward off further divine retribution, thousands of European men wandered from town to town as flagellants, whipping and scourging themselves in collective acts of expiation.
  — Niall Ferguson Bloomberg Opinion, Star Tribune, 31 July 2021
• This personal accountability is unavoidable in the casting of his daughter Sofia as Michael’s daughter Mary, a figure of sacrifice and expiation just like the totems of fallen religious statuary and the archbishop’s plummeting corpse.
  — Armond White, National Review, 4 Dec. 2020
• Nevertheless, support for him increasingly sounds like a ceremony of expiation and, ultimately, an act of faith.
  — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 20 July 2017
• For white mediums, communicating with spirits of other races could be a form of expiation, a way to confront violent histories and make cultural amends—or merely crude appropriation, garish performance art that was good for business.
  — Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 24 May 2021
• The catalog essays feature ideological arm-twisting and theoretical mind games that leave me wondering whether the people involved regard their joy as a sin demanding expiation.
  — Jed Perl, The New York Review of Books, 3 Aug. 2022
• Whether in a miscalculation or (as Jeffreys-Jones somewhat breathlessly speculates) as an act of personal expiation, Colby gave Hersh partial confirmation.
  — Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, 3 Oct. 2022
• And this revelation, investigation, and expiation not only purged the political system but reaffirmed its legitimacy before the public.
  — Mark Danner, The New York Review of Books, 1 July 2021

Last Updated: 9 Dec 2024