Definition of "golgotha" [gol•go•tha]

• A place or occasion of great suffering. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Their breeziness at the altar as well as the velcro on their vestments shows that, for them, the whole golgotha/sacrifice/wine-into-blood thing is No Big Deal."
• "Rashleigh stood a few moments an appalled spectator of this disgusting golgotha; but at last he resolved the savages should not be able to revisit that spot on the morrow to point to the senseless remains in proof of what they had done to avenge the aggressions of the white men."
• "He kept on until he saw the tip of one of his own fingers in the dead thing's sour mash, saw the white dust beneath the nail from the golgotha where he and the man in black had held their long palaver, and then he looked aside and vomited."