martyr
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Someone who willingly accepts being put to death or willingly accepts challenging and exposing iniquity done to oneself for adhering openly to one's religious beliefs.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mahrterSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɑɹtɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
One who willingly accepts being put to death or willingly accepts challenging and exposing iniquity done to oneself for adhering openly to one's religious beliefs; notably, saints canonized after red martyrdom.
One who suffers for the sake of principle
with a prepositional phrase of cause
One who suffers greatly or constantly, even involuntarily.
One who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty for refusing to renounce their religion
verb
transitive
To make someone into a martyr by putting them to death for adhering to, or acting in accordance with, some belief, especially religious; to sacrifice on account of faith or profession.
transitive
To torment; to torture.
transitive
To persecute.
Kill as a martyr
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One who willingly accepts being put to death or willingly accepts challenging and exposing iniquity done to oneself for adhering openly to one's religious beliefs; notably, saints canonized after red martyrdom.
Used this way, martyr is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a religious use: it carries the weight of tradition and ceremony.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Religion/spirituality
- Historical writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.