Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or people to God or the gods as an act of propitiation

Propitiation

Propitiation is appeasing or making well disposed , especially a deity, thus incurring divine favor or avoiding Divine retribution.-Christian theology:...

 or worship

Worship

Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning worthiness or worth-ship — to give, at its simplest, worth to something, for example, Christian worship.Evelyn Underhill defines worship thus: "The absolute...

.

While sacrifice often implies ritual killing, the term offering (Latin oblatio

Oblation

Oblation, an offering , a term, particularly in ecclesiastical usage, for a solemn offering or presentation to God.-Bible usage:...

) can be used for bloodless sacrifices of cereal food or artifacts. For offerings of liquids (beverages) by pouring, the term libation

Libation

A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a god or spirit or in memory of those who have died. It was common in many religions of antiquity and continues to be offered in various cultures today....

 is used.
The Latin term came to be used of the Christian eucharist

Eucharist

The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...

 in particular, sometimes named a "bloodless sacrifice" to distinguish it from archaic practices of "blood sacrifice".
In individual pre-Christian ethnic religion

Ethnic religion

Ethnic religion may include officially sanctioned and organized civil religions with an organized clergy, but they are characterized in that adherents generally are defined by their ethnicity, and conversion essentially equates to cultural assimilation to the people in question. Contrasted to this...

s, terms translated as "sacrifice" include the Indic yajna

Yajna

In Hinduism, yajna is a ritual of sacrifice derived from the practice of Vedic times. It is performed to please the gods or to attain certain wishes...

, the Greek thusia, the Germanic blōtan

Blót

The blót was Norse pagan sacrifice to the Norse gods and the spirits of the land. The sacrifice often took the form of a sacramental meal or feast. Related religious practices were performed by other Germanic peoples, such as the pagan Anglo-Saxons...

, the Semitic qorban/qurban, etc.

The term is also used metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

ically to describe selfless good deeds for others or a short term loss in return for a greater power gain, such as in a game of chess

Sacrifice (chess)

In chess, a sacrifice is a move giving up a piece in the hopes of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent's piece of lower value....

.