Word
purgatory
Phoneticspur·ga·to·ry
US/ˈpɝɡəˌtɔɹi/
UK/pˈɜːɡətəɹˌi/
Definitions
01religious state
n. in some Christian beliefs, a place where the souls of dead people suffer for a while to become pure before going to heaven.
n. an intermediate state after physical death in which those destined for heaven undergo purification. Usually capitalized in this specific theological context.
“In the poem, the character travels through purgatory to wash away his sins.”
“The doctrine of Purgatory remains a significant point of theological divergence between the Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations.”
Formal
Synonyms
03cleansing
adj. having the power to clean or make something pure.
adj. tending to cleanse or purify; serving to expiate or atone for a mistake.
“The priest spoke of the purgatory effects of honest confession.”
“The ritual was intended to have a purgatory influence on the community, symbolically washing away the failures of the previous year.”
Archaic · Formal
Antonyms
Real-World Examples
“Duly, Magnus ends up in a purgatory known as the “gloom”, his heart broken, with only guilt, pain and sorrow ahead.” “To understand how a teenager’s dusty New Age practice tape became the soundtrack of customer-service purgatory, you first must grasp two essential ingredients of telephone hold music: music and waiting.” Etymology
From Middle English purgatorie, from Old French purgatore, purgatorie, from Latin purgātōrium (“cleansing”). Cognate to English purge.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Word family
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englishreference.com/q/purgatory