miracle

Pluralmiracles

Formsmiracles, miracling, miracled

1. 1
   nouncountable

   An event that cannot be explained by the laws of nature and is therefore believed to have a supernatural origin.

   The villagers called her sudden recovery a miracle and lit candles in thanks.

   For centuries, crowds have gathered at the well expecting a miracle.

   Similarwonder, marvel

   Note

   The word began in wonder rather than in theology. Latin mīrāculum meant an "object of wonder," from mīror, "to wonder at," and behind that lies a root meaning "to smile, to be astonished." The religious sense narrows that astonishment to its cause, a power beyond nature. Spanish milagro and the Latinate miraculum are its doublets: the same Latin word, reaching English by other roads.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A fortunate result that comes through despite the overwhelming odds stacked against it.

   Their comeback win in the final seconds was nothing short of a miracle.

   It took a miracle for the stranded hikers to be found alive after a week.

   Similarmarvel, wonder

   Note

   No supernatural claim survives here; the word now measures odds. Its favorite frame is a clause: it was a miracle that I survived, or that a hard-won document worked at all. Economic historians stretch it to whole processes. Eric Lionel Jones titled his 2003 study The European Miracle, for growth that defied the odds against it.

   It was a miracle that anyone walked away from the crash.

   It was a miracle that the old bridge held under the flood.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A genuinely awe-inspiring and exceptional example of something.

   This bridge is a miracle of modern engineering.

   The new instrument is a miracle of design, light yet astonishingly precise.

   Similarmarvel, wonder, triumph, masterpiece

   Note

   This sense praises things people make, and it almost always takes the frame "a miracle of" plus a field: of architecture in Balzac, of engineering in Joseph R. Conlin's The American Past (2008). Conlin then calls the Las Vegas the dam powered "another kind of miracle," using the word twice in one sentence for two very different wonders.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To affect or transform someone or something by means of a miracle.

   The saint was said to miracle the blind man's sight back.

   Legends claim the relic could miracle the sick into health.

   Note

   Here the noun has been made a verb, and it is most at home in its past participle. In The Medical Critic and Guide (1925), a pilgrim declares he has been "miracled," and "the miracled invalid" is carted off for certification. It also takes an object plus into: Gary Genosko writes of "miracling fleas into the bestiary." It inflects regularly as miracled and miracling.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4