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rite of passage
(anthropology) A ceremony or series of ceremonies, often very ritualized, to celebrate a transition in a person’s life.
💬 Quotations
The so-called rites of passage, which occupy such a prominent place in the life of a primitive society (ceremonials of birth, naming, puberty, marriage, burial, etc.), are distinguished by formal, and usually very severe, exercises of severance, whereby the mind is radically cut away from the attitudes, attachments, and life patterns of the stage being left behind.
(figurative, by extension) Any significant event or experience in someone's life that marks a transition from one stage to another.