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odor of sanctity
Idioms and Phrases
Exaggerated or hypocritical piety, an assumption of moral superiority, as in This candidate puts off some voters with his odor of sanctity . This expression, originating in the medieval idea that the dead body of a saintly individual gives off a sweet smell, was used to describe saintliness in the mid-1700s. Today it is generally used ironically.Example Sentences
Fatefully, she dallied with Tenney, her second cousin, known to her since childhood, an earnest young man redolent of the “odor of sanctity†who had first courted another of her older sisters, Emily.
He shows us how to stick out the tongue, receive the bit of paper, hold it a moment, draw in the tongue, fold your hands in prayer, look toward heaven, close your eyes in adoration, wait for the paper to melt in your mouth, swallow it, and thank God for the gift, the Sanctifying Grace wafting in on the odor of sanctity.
The odor of sanctity and the form of sound words are no nearer the living spirit than are those petrifactions which present an outline of men, but never again pulsate with life.
He died in the odor of sanctity, was buried in the cathedral, and immediately he began to work miracles.
Whatever the motive, however, the effort was fruitless, for Fray Vicente was already dead in the odor of sanctity at the date of the bull.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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