noun

• The act of making amends or reparation for guilt or wrongdoing; atonement.

  ‘an act of public expiation’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The attempted assassination was an act both of expiation and of restitution.’
  • ‘The Fast of Atonement was instituted in expiation of a mortal sin and observed as a day of penance and mourning.’
  • ‘It needed expiation - atonement to remove guilt and the liability of punishment.’
  • ‘It's a wraparound justification for a violence whose real end is the expiation of shame through massacre.’
  • ‘Even supposing that punishment may effectively protect us in the future, we consider that it must be, in the first place, an expiation of the past.’

  Synonyms

  atonement, redemption, redress, reparation, restitution, recompense, requital, purgation, penance

  View synonyms