Like the ancient Hebrews, the Assyrians and Babylonians looked upon the seventh day as an "evil day"; and though they do not seem generally to have abstained from work on that day, there were various royal taboos connected with it.
And among the Kwakiutl Indians the taboos imposed upon a cannibal are more obligatory when he has devoured a corpse than when he has contented himself with taking bites out of a living man.
Opinion therefore makes taboos in accordance with experience, or what is believed to be experience, and the belief is fortified by suggestion, which produces death or disease when the taboo is broken.
Johnson and I (though not so conspicuously as the Doctor) imposed taboos on ourselves in deference to (fancied) experience.
But the reason in actual practical experience for some taboos must be plain to the most civilised minds, except those of Badical voters for the Border Boroughs.
Totems and taboos succeeded, and we are bewildered by the contending theories of the origins of taboos and totems.
These taboosare imposed from above, by Government.
In many cases, taboos are imposed on the king himself by the priestly colleges.
Of the second of the British food taboos mentioned by Cæsar we have the most perfect illustration in the instance of the Irish chieftain, Conaire, who, descended from a fowl, was interdicted from eating its flesh.
It is only in the sphere of sex that there remains an unfounded fear of presenting without the gratuitous introduction of non-essential taboos and prejudice, unbiased and unvarnished facts.
Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that surround sex; but we are breaking them down out of sheer necessity.
It may be guessed that so complex a system of regulations made life anything but easy to early peoples; but, preposterous and unreasonable as some of the taboos were, they undoubtedly had the effect of compelling the growth of self-control.
According to this an organized study and classification of taboos might yield some interesting results; because indeed it would throw light on the earliest forms of both religion and science.
Whatever taboos may have, among different peoples, guarded its operations, it was not essentially a thing to be concealed, or ashamed of.
He is sorry for people so foolish as to be animistic in their outlook, and he is always careful to point out that the scruples and taboos were quite senseless in their origin, though occasionally (by accident) they turned out useful.
Taboos surrounded these things too, and the psychological connection is easy to divine: but I shall deal with this general subject later.
The scruples or taboos which "impede the freedom" of this relation are the negative forces which give outline and form to the relation.
Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still linger, but they grow weaker.
We have seen the use and function of Taboos in the early stages of Evolution and how progress and growth have been very much a matter of their gradual extinction and assimilation into the general body of rational thought and feeling.
For other absurd Sunday taboos see Westermarck on The Moral Ideas, vol.
All the same there would be left, in any case, a large residuum of taboos which could only be judged as senseless, and the mere rubbish of the savage mind.
For taboos of this sort see Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp.
Taboos or restrictions against the killing, eating (sometimes touching, seeing) of the totem.
As to the masquerades performed and the taboos observed at the sowing season by the Kayans of the Mendalam river, see above, pp.
The ceremonies connected with sowing last several weeks, and during this time certain taboos have to be observed by the people.
They were the regulations and taboos of a civilization to which he was prepared at all times to submit, providing such submission did not compromise him.
Also they were moral, high-minded tales and thus they served as a vindication of the codes, fears, taboos which contributed the puniness to the realities of their lives.
One got rid of taboos by looking them squarely in the eye and simulating respect or remorse.
To repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question.
It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated.
As to the taboos to which warriors are subject see Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp.
Thus the rules in question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in the second part of this work;[249] they are intended to preserve the life of the divine person and with it the life of his subjects and worshippers.
These taboos were temporary and could be removed by a priest, who performed certain rites and repeated certain spells (karakias), and thereby relieved the tabooed person from the state of sanctity or consecration under which he had laboured.
The victims were generally prisoners of war, but in default of captives any men who had broken taboos or rendered themselves obnoxious to the chiefs were sacrificed.
As examples of temporary taboos may be mentioned those which were imposed on an island or district for a certain time, during which no canoe or person was allowed to approach it.
Among the multitude of taboos which were religiously observed by the Marquesans it is perhaps possible to detect a trace of totemism.
According to the latter writer, there were no taboos (festivals) in the eleventh month.
But next to religion itself, the sphere of sexual conduct has always been the great field for irrational taboos and savage punishments, and the sophists naturally marked it as a battle-field.
We know perhaps that our Tabooswere not devised on absolutely reasonable grounds, but we are afraid of just how many may not collapse before a purely reasonable inquiry.
His primitive taboos which worked so well aretaboos no longer.
An elderly man beckoned to me from his hut and there offered to sell me a heavy, ebony carved club that could kill an ox, swearing by all the taboos that it was a sacred club and had killed many a man in his father's time.
How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees alone to realize.
It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at once, and die out entirely.
But he doesn't dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself, too, by taboos innumerable.
It was for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to provide them with attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements with taboos of excessive stringency.
But it isn't so easy to make haste when all your movements are impeded and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual.
The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech when taboos were in question, "The King of Birds.
These taboos preserve her health and that of her unborn child.
Greetings and method of address The caste have some strict tabooson names and on conversation between the sexes.
Omens and taboos If a mare dropped a foal in their camp while they were travelling, they were all contaminated or came under the Itak; and the only remedy for this was to return home and start the journey afresh.
Moses framed in the mountains the ten taboos of Israel, which we hold as sacred as did the chosen people.
When a man of the Kansa tribe observed that the author had an inkling of the matter he related part of the tradition of that tribe, explaining the origin of the names and the taboos of several Kansa gentes.
The taboos and totems of the Bible, a question underlying those alimentary interdictions which ignorance regards as hygienic precepts, brought the Jewish theologians into the lists.
At the Academie des Inscriptions in 1900 the only members who did not doubt my sanity when I read some lucubrations on the Biblical taboos and the totemism of the Celts were MM.
Myths which relate the existence of, origin of, and necessity for certain taboos or forbidden things.
The marriage taboos are no less artificial, absurd, and fatal to free choice and love.
And it should be noted that in all these cases of exogamy and taboos of artificial incest, the man's liberty of choice was restricted as well as the woman's.
These taboostook on other dimensions when encoded in a literacy that ignored the pragmatics.
New totems and taboos populate this environment in which Eros, as a reminder of distant phases of anthropological evolution, continues to be present.
Many filters, in the form of varioustaboos and restrictions, as well as personal tastes, are at work.
It is this threat to survival that caused so many taboos to be placed on homosexuality in the first place.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "taboos" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
