Definition of ayatollah
: a religious leader among Shiite Muslims
—used as a title of respect especially for one who is not an imam
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Secularism is making inroads even in the holy city of Najaf, the seat of Iraq’s ayatollahs, which has thrived on Shia pilgrimage since the American invasion.
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That would be a greater danger to both his administration and U.S. interests than the displeasure of Erdogan or the ayatollahs could ever be.
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And under the deal, the ayatollahs have no viable path to a bomb for well over a decade.
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The ayatollahs have neither the desire nor the incentive to renegotiate even a comma of the agreement.
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The ayatollahs are using Mr. Obama’s handiwork to legitimize their terrorist state, facilitate (and conceal) their continuing nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, and acquire valuable resources from gullible negotiating partners.
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Most unnerving, the president’s strategic blindness threatens to put the Iranian ayatollahs back on a short-term path to a bomb.
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New Jersey’s Corey Booker, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, and other Democrats remained uncommitted, threatening Obama’s $150 billion bailout of the atomic ayatollahs.
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Helping the Baghdad government is equivalent, sad to say, to helping the ayatollahs in Iran.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ayatollah.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Origin and Etymology of ayatollah
Persian āyatollāh, literally, sign of God, from Arabic āyatallāh, from āya sign, miracle + allāh God
Other Religion (Eastern and Other) Terms
Zen, antinomian, avatar, gnosticism, illuminati, ineffable, karma, koan, mantra
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