ppl. a. [f. prec. + -ED.]
1. Dedicated to a sacred purpose; made sacred; hallowed, sanctified.
1552. Bk. Com. Prayer, Consecr. Bps. Rubric, Then the Archbishop shall proceed to the communion, with whom the new consecrated Bishop with others shall also communicate.
1662. Bk. Com. Prayer, Communion. If the consecrated bread or wine be all spent.
1756–7. trans. Keysler’s Trav. (1760), IV. 117. An altar-piece representing our Saviour, distributing consecrated wafers to the disciples.
absol. 1659. Bramhall, Ch. Eng. Defended, 75. Such an ordination subjected both the consecrators and the consecrated to deprivation.
b. spec. Of a church, churchyard, or burial-ground: Set apart with religious forms by a bishop, for public worship, or the burial of the dead, and having such ecclesiastical and legal status as this gives in England and some of the colonies.
1601. Shaks., Twel. N., IV. iii. 25. Vnderneath that consecrated roofe.
1632. High Commission Cases (Camden), 277. Whereas the Parish Church of Hurly is a consecrated place.
1876. Blunt & Phillimore, Bk. of Ch. Law, V. i. 303. The law … forbids a clergyman to officiate publicly in any building which is not either consecrated or licensed for Divine Service by the bishop. Ibid., 315. The Status of Consecrated land and buildings.—The estate in a consecrated church and church-yard is one of freehold of which the fee-simple is in abeyance.
Mod. A walk divides the consecrated from the unconsecrated part of the cemetery. The body was not buried in consecrated ground.
2. Dedicated, ‘sacred’ to a tutelary divinity.
1599. Thynne, Animadv. (1865), 1. The monthe of Januarye (consecrated to the dooble faced godd Janus).
1872. Yeats, Growth Comm., 51. Olives … the fruit was consecrated to Minerva.
1884. Gustafson, Found. Death, i. (ed. 3), 15. The serpent was consecrated to Bacchus.
3. fig. Sanctioned by general observance or usage [F. consacré].
1868. M. Pattison, Academ. Org., v. 211. These services, to use the consecrated phrase, get on well enough.
1872. Bagehot, Physics & Pol. (1876), 162. The only sufficient and effectual agent in so doing was consecrated custom.
Hence Consecratedness.
1846. in Worcester.
1847. in Craig; and in subseq. Dicts.
