Definition of iconoclast
1 : a person who destroys religious images or opposes their veneration
2 : a person who attacks settled beliefs or institutions
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Examples of iconoclast in a Sentence
notorious as an iconoclast, that music critic isn't afraid to go after sacred cows
Recent Examples of iconoclast from the Web
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There are also examples of 14th-century statuary, smashed in the 1500s as radical Reformers turned iconoclasts and attacked church imagery.
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Like Trump, Puzder is also something of an iconoclast, someone keenly able to find his way into controversy.
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A political iconoclast and gadfly, Spitz could generally be found campaigning for, and losing, elections for every office from the state assembly to city council to mayor.
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His characters have always been cut from a certain kind of cloth — funny, high-I.Q. urban cool cats and iconoclasts and loners.
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Then again, Sir Alec Guinness never had the assets of Dame Helen Mirren, actress, iconoclast, and inspiration to sixty-three-year-old women (and men) everywhere.
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Did You Know?
Iconoclast is a word that often shows up on vocabulary lists and College Board tests. How will you remember the meaning of this vocabulary-boosting term? If you already know the word icon, you're halfway there. An icon is a picture that represents something. The most common icons today are those little images on our computers and smartphones that represent a program or function, but in the still-recent past, the most common icons were religious images. Icon comes from the Greek eikōn, which is from eikenai, meaning "to resemble." Iconoclast comes to us by way of Medieval Latin from Middle Greek eikonoklastēs, which joins eikōn with a form of the word klan, meaning "to break." Iconoclast literally means "image destroyer."
Origin and Etymology of iconoclast
Medieval Latin iconoclastes, from Middle Greek eikonoklastēs, literally, image destroyer, from Greek eikono- + klan to break — more at clast
First Known Use: 1641
Other Religion (Eastern and Other) Terms
Zen, antinomian, avatar, gnosticism, illuminati, ineffable, karma, koan, mantra
ICONOCLAST Defined for English Language Learners
iconoclast
playDefinition of iconoclast for English Language Learners
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: a person who criticizes or opposes beliefs and practices that are widely accepted
Learn More about iconoclast
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See words that rhyme with iconoclast Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for iconoclast Spanish Central: Translation of iconoclast Nglish: Translation of iconoclast for Spanish speakers
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