biblical
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈbɪblɪkəl/
Forms: form: more biblical
form: most biblical
form: Biblical
Etymology: From Medieval Latin biblicus + -al, equivalent to bible + -ical.
Senses: examples: text: Tithing is both a quranic and biblical virtue.
text: Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
text: She claws it away with her fingers. Falls heavily on her shoulders. Accepts the congratulations of her teammates, who look like they have just seen a biblical miracle.
ref: 2025 July 19, Jonathan Liew, “Ann-Katrin Berger follows up biblical miracle with penalty heroics for Germany”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
glosses: Of or relating to the Bible.
examples: text: biblical morality
text: The biblical teaching is that…
text: Mike Pompeo, the former US secretary of state, has defended Israel’s decades-long control of the Palestinian territories by claiming that the Jewish state has a biblical claim to the land and is therefore not occupying it.
ref: 2023 February 16, Chris McGreal, quoting Mike Pompeo, “Pompeo says Israel has biblical claim to Palestine and is ‘not an occupying nation’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
glosses: In accordance with the teachings of the Bible (according to some interpretation of it).
examples: text: of biblical proportions
text: with biblical fury
text: To have striven so hard, to have molded a public personality out of so amorphous an identity, to have sustained that superhuman effort only to end with every weakness disclosed and every error compounding the downfall—that was a fate of biblical proportions.
ref: 1982, Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, →ISBN:
text: Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr. Raymond Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
ref: 1984, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ghostbusters:
text: We gather tonight at a dramatic and deeply promising time in our history, and in the history of man on earth. For in the past 12 months, the world has known changes of almost biblical proportions. And even now, months after the failed coup that doomed a failed system, I am not sure we have absorbed the full impact, the full import of what happened.
ref: 1992, George H. W. Bush, State of the Union Address:
text: Russell Banks's “Cloudsplitter,” a novel of near-biblical proportions about the abolitionist freedom fighter John Brown, is shaped like an explosive with an exceedingly long and winding fuse.
ref: 1998 February 22, Walter Kirn, “The Wages of Righteousness”, in The New York Times:
text: During a thundershower of biblical proportions, hundreds of people dash from a train station in the Tokyo suburb of Kawaguchi, across a bricked plaza and into a modern civic center.
ref: 2002 July 1, Tim Larimer, “Cult Shock”, in Time, archived from the original on 25 Feb 2012:
text: The Da Vinci Code resurrects a debate of biblical proportions.
ref: 2003 July 20, Roxanne Roberts, “The Mysteries of Mary Magdalene”, in Washington Post, page D01:
text: He also drilled into us that all the secrets of the structure of matter were implicit in Charlotte Moore's tables, which assumed an authority and role of biblical proportions.
ref: 2003, Arthur M. Lesk, “From electrons to proteins and back again”, in International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, volume 95, number 6, page 679:
text: In the midst of a national disaster of biblical proportions, it is difficult for the American people to participate fully in the selection of the next chief justice.
ref: 2005 September 6, Ted Kennedy, quotee, “Bush Nominates Robert as Chief Justice”, in CNN, archived from the original on 28 Jun 2018:
text: An increase in the pace at which sea levels are rising threatens “a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale”, the UN secretary general has warned.
ref: 2023 February 14, Damian Carrington, quoting António Guterres, “Rising seas threaten ‘mass exodus on a biblical scale’, UN chief warns”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
glosses: Very great; especially, exceeding previous records in scale.
Synonyms: word: biblic
Hypernyms: scriptural
Hyponyms: word: evangelic
word: pentateuchal
word: psalmic
word: Torahic
word: New Testament
alt: rarely New Testamental, Old Testamental
word: Old Testament
Coordinate terms: sense: by sources of faith
word: apostolic
word: conciliar
word: ex cathedra
word: Mishnaic
word: Rabbinic
word: Talmudic
word: traditional
sense: by religions
word: Avestan
word: Qur'anic
word: Vedic
Derived terms: antibiblical
biblical blue
biblicality
biblically
biblical studies
extrabiblical
extra-biblical
in the biblical sense
know someone in the biblical sense
postbiblical
prebiblical
Related terms: biblicism
biblicist