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purgation

/pɜɹˈɡeɪʃn/noun

purgation is a noun meaning “The process or act of purging, such as by the use of a purgative” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-U-R-G-A-T-I-O-N and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 22 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of purgation is purgations.

What does purgation mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The process or act of purging, such as by the use of a purgative.

    But those females who conceive without menstrual purgations, or who conceive during the time of the menstrual efflux, and not afterwards, […] and in the second instance because, after the completion of the menstrual purgations, the mouth of

  2. 2

    The process or act of cleansing from sin or guilt.

    Records concerning the individual purgations, which tell us about the crime of the offender and the date of his release, are much more capriciously registered: four dioceses, or some eight counties, yield only fifty-four examples between 14

  3. 3

    archaicExoneration or the act undertaken to achieve exoneration.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce purgation?

  • UK /pɜːˈɡeɪʃn/
  • US /pɜɹˈɡeɪʃn/

Purgation has 2 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-purgation.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of purgation

  • purgations plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is purgation?

Purgation appears about once in every 22 million words in written English, the 143,405th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Where does purgation come from?

From Middle English purgacioun, borrowed from Anglo-Norman purgacion, itself borrowed from Latin pūrgātiō; equivalent to purge + -ation.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).