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Superstition   /sˌupərstˈɪʃən/   Listen
noun
Superstition  n.  
1.
An excessive reverence for, or fear of, that which is unknown or mysterious.
2.
An ignorant or irrational worship of the Supreme Deity; excessive exactness or rigor in religious opinions or practice; extreme and unnecessary scruples in the observance of religious rites not commanded, or of points of minor importance; also, a rite or practice proceeding from excess of sculptures in religion. "And the truth With superstitions and traditions taint."
3.
The worship of a false god or gods; false religion; religious veneration for objects. "(The accusers) had certain questions against him of their own superstition."
4.
Belief in the direct agency of superior powers in certain extraordinary or singular events, or in magic, omens, prognostics, or the like.
5.
Excessive nicety; scrupulous exactness.
Synonyms: Fanaticism. Superstition, Fanaticism. Superstition springs from religious feeling misdirected or unenlightened. Fanaticism arises from this same feeling in a state of high-wrought and self-confident excitement. The former leads in some cases to excessive rigor in religious opinions or practice; in others, to unfounded belief in extraordinary events or in charms, omens, and prognostics, hence producing weak fears, or excessive scrupulosity as to outward observances. The latter gives rise to an utter disregard of reason under the false assumption of enjoying a guidance directly inspired. Fanaticism has a secondary sense as applied to politics, etc., which corresponds to the primary.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Superstition" Quotes from Famous Books



... Narragansett,—of his kin, his life, his work. His home is at the cross-roads where three townships meet, a cross-roads where has often taken place that curious and senseless survival of old-time tradition and superstition—shift marriages. A widow, a cousin of the Weaver Rose's father, was the last to undergo this ordeal; clad only in her shift, she thrice crossed the King's Highway and was thus married to avoid payment of her first husband's ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... woman, whilst we hear a voice saying, "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; speak to the people that they go forward," let us not be dismayed at the hindrances we shall encounter from those whom we are laboring to release from the swaddling bands of infancy, or the grave-clothes of superstition, time-honored opinion and crushing circumstances. We are now in a perilous and difficult position. We feel all the inconveniences of our past condition, all the disadvantages and uneasiness of the one we are constrained to occupy, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Radnor—atrocities that seemed not only purposeless, but at utter variance with the courtesy and gentleness of his bearing—Oswald came to believe that his brain had, to some extent, become unhinged by excitement, flattery, and superstition. ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... the mist of candles before the Ikons, the rough painted pictures on the shops advertising the goods sold within—all these things shared in that crude idealistic, cynical ignorance, in that fairy-tale of brutality, goodness, cowardice, and bravery, malice and generosity, superstition and devotion that was so shortly to be offered to a materialistic, hard-fighting, brave and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... very easy to be made away with. That the corporal's vision was no fiction, was evident—the lad was not to be hurt by mortal man; but although the widow's arsenic had failed, Mr Vanslyperken, in his superstition, accounted for it on the grounds that the woman was not the active agent on the occasion, having only prepared the herring, it not having been received from her hands by Smallbones. The reader may recollect that, in the ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat


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