propitiate

So when an epidemic gets underway, we don’t waste time on sacrifices to propitiate angry gods or fretting about deadly miasmas seeping in with the night air.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 28, 2020

I suspect that Oskar probably still believes that it was just something in my nature: that somebody needed to be sacrificed on the altar on the way to propitiate whatever, and that that was him.

From Slate ● Jun. 28, 2016

Was it just to tell the date or propitiate some mountain deity?

From The Guardian ● Feb. 8, 2013

But under the logic of the bailout, the markets were in charge, and the overarching aim of the government was to propitiate them to avoid disaster.

From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2010

His dæmon growled softly; the golden monkey dropped his head low to propitiate her.

From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman

Of William’s father, who propitiates a wealthy relative, we read: “he wasn’t a mercenary man, but this was his only rich unmarried aunt.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026

The Indian yields to it a sort of worship, propitiates it with offerings of tobacco, thanks it in prosperity, and upbraids it in disaster.

From The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century by Francis Parkman

They believe that shaving the head of the dead propitiates the deities in their favour.

From Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs by Jacob Mortimer Wier Silver

One of nobler birth propitiates only the spirits of his own ancestors.

From The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell

Ages, empires, civilisations pass, and leave some members even of educated mankind still, in certain points, on the level of the savage who propitiates with gifts, or addresses with prayers, the spirits of the dead.

From Cock Lane and Common-Sense by Andrew Lang

True to form, Iranians haven't been propitiated by such gestures.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026

I promise I won't let our multithreaded discussion veer too far down the red carpet, but the Oscars are the Oscars; their vestal fires burn, their gods must be propitiated.

From Slate ● Jan. 16, 2014

Villagers prevailed upon construction workers to stop work until the dragon had been propitiated.

From Time Magazine Archive

He propitiated many of Germany's other former enemies by dropping to his knees in front of a memorial to the victims of the Warsaw ghetto.

From Time Magazine Archive

The gods had to be propitiated, and a vast industry of priests and oracles arose to make the gods less angry.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

He suggests that they may have perceived the cave walls as a kind of membrane between their world and the spirits, and thus created their paintings as a means of propitiating them.

From The Guardian ● May 23, 2020

On this teacher’s advice, the Dalai Lama had himself been propitiating this dangerous spirit – along with innumerable other esoteric rituals – as part of his daily four hours of meditation and spiritual exercise.

From Newsweek

Rotha was at first dumb with a sort of perplexed dismay; then she reflected, that to carry out her propitiating policy it would be best not to shew either scorn or disgust.

From A Letter of Credit by Susan Warner

Afterwards the brothers dug a deep well, and on the pretence of propitiating the water spirit induced their wives to stand round the well with offerings of rice, &c., in their hands.

From Santal Folk Tales by A. Campbell

From this simple idea of securing faithfulness by the transfusion of the blood of two persons seems to have come the idea of propitiating the gods by offering them bloody sacrifices.

From The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets by Richard B. Westbrook