Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Hungary now faces the prospect of a contentious and divisive purgation of his minions at all levels of society.—Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com, 14 Apr. 2026 That logic, now her signature, has been one of purgation.—Nicholas Dames, The Atlantic, 14 June 2024 Next is purgation, aimed at flushing out the intestines.—Jane Alexander, Condé Nast Traveler, 29 Feb. 2024 If moviegoing is an act of ritual purgation, Cage must be its high priest, his performances a kind of ecstatic self-flagellation through which we’re cleansed—or, to use Kidman’s term, reborn.—Dan Piepenbring, Harper’s Magazine , 18 Jan. 2022 Part of the fantasy of the baths has always been about the grace of purgation — this urge to slough away the lesser parts of ourselves and let our better selves emerge instead: rarefied, whittled, purified.—Leslie Jamison, New York Times, 22 Sep. 2020 This purgation is absent from Jeff Buckley’s soft, wounded crooning.—Hannah Seidlitz, Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020 Frozen yogurt in the afterlife The seventh and eighth centuries saw the growth of teaching about an intermediate place where souls undergo purification and purgation.—Matthew Robert Anderson, Quartzy, 27 Nov. 2019