Means to sacrifice, i.e. "self-immolation" means to sacrifice oneself. However the word entered popular parlance thanks to the famous photo taken on June 16, 1963, when Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc immolated himself in downtown Saigon in protest against the Vietnam War. (see http://www.angelfire.com/nb/protest/viet.html) The problem is the visual kind of overpowered the semantic and now most people who use or hear the word think it means to burn. More than once I've heard a newsreader (here in Australia anyway) say "A family of four were immolated yesterday when their car ran off the road ...." Not piracy. Just plain stupid.

submitted by Chris Poole

TrackBack ping me at:

http://www.wordpirates.com/index.cgi.trackback