Wiktionary:Word of the day/2024/June 16

1. (religion)
   1. Originally, the killing (and often burning) of a human being or an animal as an offering to a deity; later, also the offering of an object to a deity.
   2. A human being or an animal, or a physical object or immaterial thing (see sense 1.3), offered to a deity.
   3. (figurative) The offering of devotion, penitence, prayer, thanksgiving, etc., to a deity.
   4. (Christianity, specifically)
      1. Jesus Christ's voluntary offering of himself to God the Father to be crucified as atonement for the sins of humankind.
      2. (by extension) The rite of Holy Communion or the Mass, regarded as (Protestantism) an offering of thanksgiving to God for Christ's crucifixion, or (Roman Catholicism) a perpetual re-enactment of Christ's sacrificial offering.
2. (figurative)
   1. The destruction or surrender of anything for the sake of something else regarded as more urgent or valuable; also, the thing destroyed or surrendered for this purpose.
   2. (baseball) Short for sacrifice bunt or sacrifice hit (“a play in which the batter intentionally hits the ball softly with a hands-spread batting stance at the cost of an out to advance one or more runners”)
   3. (bridge) In full sacrifice bid: a bid of a contract which is unlikely to be fulfilled, that a player makes in the hope that they will incur fewer penalty points than the points likely to be gained by opponents in making their contract.
   4. (business, slang, dated) A monetary loss incurred by selling something at less than its value; also, the thing thus sold.
   5. (chess) An act of intentionally allowing one's piece to be captured by the opponent in order to improve one's position in the game.

In many countries, today is the start of عِيد الْأَضْحَى (ʕīd al-ʔaḍḥā, “Eid al-Adha or Festival of the Sacrifice”), an Islamic festival which honours the willingness of the prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to Allah’s command.