Definition of "human sacrifice"

[ECOLING at aol.com]

>Sacrifice is 'to make sacred'.  A killing which is a
>sacrifice is conducted for a specific religious reason, as part of a
>ritual in which such killing plays a necessary part.  Killings motivated
>by secular goals (winning a war, ridding society of a troublemaker, and
>the like) are *not* sacrifices.  ..."

"Sacrifice" as sacri-ficare WAS once "to make sacred",
presumably when the term was first coined in Latin,
though perhaps not exclusively so for long thereafter, even in Latin.

But the MODERN meaning of "human sacrifice" is
defined not by you, me or any dictionary,
it is defined by how people actually DO use it.
(I am a trained linguist, and prescriptivism is to me forbidden.)

So empirical evidence of usage is relevant.
This is true without claiming to have any definitive
insight into what the facts of modern usage are
in every detail.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics