First recorded in 1865–70
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Philip Breen, who is responsible for the adaptation, first approached Mullan a number of years ago about an eight-hour passion play he envisaged with a community chorus.
From BBC ● Mar. 21, 2025
The Iranian passion play is a recurring motif, both on the stage and in the streets.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 1, 2022
“But we have an endless desire to bring our passion play back to the stage and we are highly motivated.”
From Seattle Times ● May 7, 2022
He is our voracious, inescapable character, like someone out of Saul Bellow or Paddy Chayefsky, a looming, blustery presence who has turned “Saturday Night Live” into a rollicking, national passion play.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2019
It was a ticket to admit Two happy people close to sit— A 'Season' ticket, one might say, At Time's eternal passion play.
From Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; and Other Poems by Le Gallienne, Richard
"Superstar" is structured similarly to a traditional Christian Passion play, depicting Jesus' final days.
From Salon ● Apr. 16, 2022
No wonder his contemporaries have rushed to help prop up Elder’s Passion play of pomposity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2021
It was the fifty-eighth anniversary of the operation, which ended in catastrophe; the annual commemoration has become a kind of Miami Passion play.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 29, 2019
A Good Friday service and procession will replace a Passion play which was cancelled after a council official did not realise it was a religious event.
From BBC ● Apr. 18, 2014
I had always rather wanted to see the Passion play, but the thought of the fashionable Ober-Ammergau made me sick.
From Dreamers of the Ghetto by Zangwill, Israel
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
