Word: unctions
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...collective nouns (a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions, a skulk of foxes, a labor of moles), most of which began in the 1400s in England as precise terms of venery. Happily, the collection has continued to grow during the intervening centuries: a shrivel of critics, an unction of undertakers (which, in larger groups, becomes an extreme unction of undertakers), and a swish of hairdressers. Etymology has seldom been pursued with more charm, literacy...
...floor by Bill Barry. A guard attempted to keep both a priest and Ethel away from the emergency room, flashed a badge, which Ethel knocked from his hand. The guard struck at her; Tuck and Fred Dutton swept him aside. Then the priest was allowed to administer extreme unction...
...this too un-Christian, too uncharitable a response to events? One cannot, I suppose, begrudge the powerful their characteristic unction in these circumstances. Indeed, it may remind us again of how different he was from them...
...Tuchman, noted historian and author of The Guns of August, implied that the U.S. had risked a Munich-like sellout by failing to come to Israel's aid more energetically. "If they [the Israelis] had not fought, the world would have sacrificed Israel -- with unction, with pious formula ... but without question," she declared...
...that matter, most Protestant churches themselves give full sacramental character only to baptism and the Eucharist. Lutherans and Anglicans regard the other sacraments that Catholics hold sacred (ordination, confirmation, marriage, penance and extreme unction) as salutary but subordinate...