excommunication

noun ex·com·mu·ni·ca·tion \ ˌek-skə-ˌmyü-nə-ˈkā-shən \

Definition of excommunication

1 :an ecclesiastical censure depriving a person of the rights of church membership

2 :exclusion from fellowship in a group or community

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excommunicative

play \ˌek-skə-ˈmyü-nə-ˌkā-tiv, -ni-kə-tiv\ adjective

Recent Examples of excommunication from the Web

The Bishop of Quebec ordered the excommunication of any French trader who sold liquor to the Indians.

— Longreads, "America’s First Addiction Epidemic," 29 Aug. 2017
Prince added that excommunications are more common in the Mormon Church, however.

— michelle boorstein, Washington Post, "Mormon official ousted; first excommunication of a top church leader in decades," 8 Aug. 2017
After his excommunication at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump fell off the mainstream political radar, save for his periodic appearances on Fox News.

— joshua green, Bloomberg.com, "The Remaking of Donald Trump," 6 July 2017
In Heretics, Spinoza also served as the paradigmatic recipient of excommunication, an example of the terrible fate of those who run afoul of dogma.

— josephine livingstone, New Republic, "There’s a New Literary Celebrity in Town, and His Name Is Baruch Spinoza," 31 May 2017
The first such act of ideological excommunication came in the pages of National Review in 1957, two years after Buckley founded the magazine.

— damon linker, New York Times, "William F. Buckley and the Odyssey of Conservatism," 8 May 2017
In his final act of excommunication, Buckley took a stand against the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan in 1991 for expressing opposition to the Persian Gulf war in terms that were both incendiary and undeniably anti-Semitic.

— damon linker, New York Times, "William F. Buckley and the Odyssey of Conservatism," 8 May 2017
A small stream of Socialist members of Parliament have signed on, despite threats of excommunication from the party, as well as some business and political leaders.

— adam nossiter, New York Times, "Emmanuel Macron Steps Into France’s Political Void," 13 Feb. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'excommunication.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.