''pilgrimage'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260717141042-00-⌔

pilgrimage - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

pilgrimage (plural pilgrimages)

• A journey made to a sacred place, or a religious journey.
  • ✤ In the Muslim faith, the pilgrimage to Mecca is known as the Hajj.
  • ✤ Rome, the mighty mother of the Christian faith, whose amphitheatres had been red with the blood of the saints, and where the pilgrimage and the miracle still testified to the truth.¹
  • ✤ It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.²
  • ✤ Quarians are surgically fitted with their various immunity-boosted implants in preparation for leaving on Pilgrimage.³
• (by extension) A visit to any site revered or associated with a meaningful event.
  • ✤ Each year we made a pilgrimage to New York City to visit the pub where we all first met.
  • ✤ The Berghof, too, was largely reduced to ash, sparing it the indignity of the tour guides Hitler so dreaded, and leaving a place of pilgrimage for future generations of Hitler worshippers—exactly how Adolf Hitler would have wanted it.⁴
  • ✤ For fans, the shows are a pilgrimage, and a rediscovery of the joys of mass gatherings.⁵
  • ✤ Earlier this year, the resident was granted permission to install a gate to deter them from making what has become a sort of pilgrimage [Carrie Bradshaw’s stoop].⁶

Verb

pilgrimage (third-person singular simple present pilgrimages, present participle pilgrimaging, simple past and past participle pilgrimaged)

• To go on a pilgrimage.
  • ✤ in descent, as now, he always had a holy sense of having pilgerimaged, of returning having seen behind a veil.⁷

Etymology

From Middle English pilgrimage. By surface analysis, pilgrim +‎ -age.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈpɪlɡɹɪmɪd͡ʒ/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• Hyphenation: pil‧gri‧mage

Printed 2026-07-17.

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Footnotes

1. 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 187: ↩

2. 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 204: ↩

3. 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Quarians: Pilgrimage Codex entry: ↩

4. 2005 April, Timothy W. Ryback, “The Hitler Shrine”, in The Atlantic ‎${}^{[1]}$, →ISSN: ↩

5. 2023 August 5, Ben Sisario, “How Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Conquered the World”, in New York Times ‎${}^{[2]}$: ↩

6. 2025 May 5, Brock Colyar, “It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl”, in New York ‎${}^{[3]}$, archived from the original on 19 May 2025: ↩

7. 2023, Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood, page 78: ↩