passion play
noun
Simple meaning
Any analogous religious story of the suffering, death, and resurrection of other gods or goddesses, or of the martyrdom of holy people.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pashuhnplaySay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpæʃənpˈleɪ
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
A play representing the Passion of Christ
A play depicting the Passion of Christ.
Any analogous religious story of the suffering, death, and resurrection of other gods or goddesses, or of the martyrdom of holy people, such as the Muslim tazia.
An overly dramatic depiction or enaction of something, especially when not usually dramatic.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A play representing the Passion of Christ
Used this way, passion play is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
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.