Definition of "sacrifice" []

• The act of offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or a person. (noun)
• A victim offered in this way. (noun)
• Forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim. (noun)
• Something so forfeited. (noun)
• Relinquishment of something at less than its presumed value. (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.

• "Should any one seek to bargain with himself to pay the price of loss of self, so that he might gain the higher, fuller life, his sacrifice would be in vain because it would not be selflessness, but selfishness -- there could be no _sacrifice_, were it a bargain."
• "I _love_ him _more_ than I can say, and I shall do everything in my power to render the sacrifice he has made (for a _sacrifice_ in my opinion it is) as small as I can."
• "There are mixed modes here also, as in the use of the term sacrifice, — the word has a temporary allusive reference to a Mosaical figure of speech."