sacrifice

sacrifice [Ge].
The slaughter of an animal or person or the surrender of a possession as an offering to a deity. Many societies in different parts of the world and at different times practised sacrifice, often according to regularized astronomical or calendrical events relating to dangerous or critical moments. Although generally seen as ceremonial in context, sacrifice may have functional ends institutionalized in the practice itself, for example the regulation of population and the creation of an instrument of political terror.