Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as aspersorium, 1.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The brush used in the Roman Catholic church for sprinkling holy water on the people.
  • noun (Zoöl.) See Wateringpot shell.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An aspergillum.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a short-handled device with a globe containing a sponge; used for sprinkling holy water

Etymologies

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Examples

  • She covered her retreat nobly, made a curtsey to the priests, genuflected calmly, laid down the aspergill, and, under pretence of having been sent for something which these careless priests had forgotten, retired with honors; and then I suppose had a good long cry.

    My New Curate P.A. Sheehan

  • And she stood there at the altar-rails, erect and defiant, and there was not a tremor in the hand that held the holy-water vase, nor in the hand that held the aspergill.

    My New Curate P.A. Sheehan

  • Led by their chief, bearing the insignia of the Antelope fraternity and the whizzer, followed by the asperger, with his medicine bowl and aspergill and wearing a chaplet of green cottonwood leaves on his long, glossy, black hair, they circle the plaza four times, each time stamping heavily on the sipapu board with the right foot, as a signal to the spirits of the underworld that they are about to begin the ceremony.

    The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi Hattie Greene Lockett 1921

Comments

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  • used to sprinkle holy water

    February 7, 2007