different between expiatory vs purgatory

English

Adjective

expiatory (comparative more expiatory, superlative most expiatory)

1. Of or pertaining to expiation.
   • 18 January 1549, Hugh Latimer, Sermon of the Plough

     They would have us saved by a daily oblation propitiatory; by a sacrifice expiatory, or remissory.

Translations

English

Etymology

From Latin purg?t?rium (“cleansing”). Cognate to English purge.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?p????t??i/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?p????t?i/
• US: pur?ga?to?ry
• UK: pur?ga?tory

Noun

purgatory (countable and uncountable, plural purgatories)

1. (Christianity) Alternative letter-case form of Purgatory
2. Any situation where suffering is endured, particularly as part of a process of redemption.
   • 1605, Nicholas Breton, An Olde Mans Lesson, and a Young Mans Loue, London: Edward White,^[1]

     […] many Gods breedeth heathens miseries, many countries trauailers humors, many wiues mens purgatories, and many friends trustes ruine:

   • 1774, John Burgoyne, The Maid of the Oaks, London: T. Becket, Act I, Scene 1, p. 6,^[2]

     I laid my rank and fortune at the fair one’s feet, and would have married instantly; but that Oldworth opposed my precipitancy, and insisted upon a probation of six months absence—It has been a purgatory!

   • 1853, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth, Chapter 25,^[3]

     It might be […] that Ruth had worked her way through the deep purgatory of repentance up to something like purity again; God only knew!

   • 1904, Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Chapter 10,^[4]

     Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the dingy killing beds of Durham’s became a very purgatory; one time, in a single day, three men fell dead from sunstroke.

   • 1997, J. M. Coetzee, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, Penguin, Chapter 11, p. 100,^[5]

     […] that would mean he would be irrecoverably Afrikaans and would have to spend years in the purgatory of an Afrikaans boarding-school, as all farm-children do, before he would be allowed to come back to the farm.

Related terms

Translations

Adjective

purgatory (comparative more purgatory, superlative most purgatory)

1. Tending to cleanse; expiatory.
   • 1600, Philemon Holland (translator), The Roman Historie Written by T. Livius of Padua, London, Book 41, p. 1103,^[6]

     Last of all, the prodigie of Siracusa was expiat by a purgatory sacrifice, by direction from the soothsaiers to what gods, supplications and sacrifice should be made.

   • 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, London: J. Dodsley, p. 272,^[7]

     This purgatory interval is not unfavourable to a faithless representative, who may be as good a canvasser as he was a bad governor.

See also

• heaven
• hell
• limbo
• gehenna