heroic sacrifice
Dying for others
Heroic sacrifice is giving up something precious—often one's life—to save others or serve a greater cause.
The phrase emphasizes both the nobility of the act and its cost: The soldier's heroic sacrifice saved his entire platoon.
Unlike ordinary sacrifice, heroic sacrifice implies danger faced willingly, usually with awareness that survival is unlikely.
- altruismPrioritizing others' wellbeing
- dutyRequired moral task
- call of dutyCompelling moral responsibility
- courageFortitude facing danger
- braveryBoldness before danger
fall · noble death · legacy · charge · selflessness · greater good · save the world · redemption · patriotism · moral dilemmas · memorialization · last stand · self-immolation · dying wish · martyr · devotion · rescue · honor
- entertainment clicheshappy ending, cliffhanger, plot twist, love triangle, damsel in distress
- comic tropessecret identity, origin story, superpowers, sidekick, supervillain
- RomanticismWilliam Blake, the sublime, J.M.W. Turner, Eugene Delacroix, emotionalism
heroic sacrificeturning tail
Fleeing from danger
running away · cutting and running · flight · panic · cowering
heroic sacrificetreachery
Deliberate violation of trust
betrayal · atrocity · war crime · selling out