sacr

Latin

Verified

sacrificium

an offering or act of making sacred

from Latin sacrificium

Old French

Verified

sacrifise

the word passes into French as a religious offering

from Old French sacrifise "sacrifice, offering" (12c.)

fac

Latin

AI-inferred

facere

to make, do

Latin

Verified

sacrificium

facere combines with sacra to create the sense of 'a making sacred'

from Latin sacrificium

Combined

sacrifice

a Latin-French religious coinage that reached English in the late 13th century

Modern English

AI-inferred

sacrifice

widens from ritual offering to any costly surrender

Modern English

AI-inferred

sacrifice → a baseball sacrifice

a specialized sports use recorded by 1880

Modern English

sacrifice

Word Ancestry

sacr

Latin

Verified

sacrificium

an offering or act of making sacred

from Latin sacrificium

Old French

Verified

sacrifise

the word passes into French as a religious offering

from Old French sacrifise "sacrifice, offering" (12c.)

fac

Latin

AI-inferred

facere

to make, do

Latin

Verified

sacrificium

facere combines with sacra to create the sense of 'a making sacred'

from Latin sacrificium

Combined

sacrifice

a Latin-French religious coinage that reached English in the late 13th century

Modern English

AI-inferred

sacrifice

widens from ritual offering to any costly surrender

Modern English

AI-inferred

sacrifice → a baseball sacrifice

a specialized sports use recorded by 1880

Modern English

sacrifice

“

This is one of those words that still smells faintly of smoke from an altar. In Latin, it was basically a neat little idea: something was made sacred — sacra plus facere — so the act itself became a kind of holy manufacture. That same facere lives on in flashy cousins like factor, factory, and facilitate, while the sacred half turns up in sacrament, sacrilege, and sacred, all clustered around the old business of keeping gods pleased and rules unbroken. Medieval Latin pushed the term into French as sacrifise, and English picked it up in the late 1200s, when religious offering was the main event; only later did it broaden into the everyday meaning of giving up a good thing for a better one. By the 1500s, you could sacrifice not just a lamb, but time, comfort, or even ambition — and in baseball, you can still make a sacrifice that scores nobody a meal, but helps somebody else cross home plate.

The Story

“

This is one of those words that still smells faintly of smoke from an altar. In Latin, it was basically a neat little idea: something was made sacred — sacra plus facere — so the act itself became a kind of holy manufacture. That same facere lives on in flashy cousins like factor, factory, and facilitate, while the sacred half turns up in sacrament, sacrilege, and sacred, all clustered around the old business of keeping gods pleased and rules unbroken. Medieval Latin pushed the term into French as sacrifise, and English picked it up in the late 1200s, when religious offering was the main event; only later did it broaden into the everyday meaning of giving up a good thing for a better one. By the 1500s, you could sacrifice not just a lamb, but time, comfort, or even ambition — and in baseball, you can still make a sacrifice that scores nobody a meal, but helps somebody else cross home plate.