creed

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English crede,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English crēda,^[5][3][6] borrowed from Latin crēdō (“I believe”),^[7][3][8] the first word of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds in their Latin versions.^[6][8] The Latin verb is related to Old Irish cretim (“I believe”), Welsh credu,^[9][6] Avestan zrazdā- (“to believe”) and Sanskrit श्रद्दधाति (śráddadhāti, “he believes”).^[6][9][1] Its origin is debated.^[4][9] Etymonline derives it from a compound Proto-Indo-European *kerd-dhe- (“to put one's heart”), from *kerd- (“heart”).^[4] Merriam-Webster and Klein instead see a first element meaning "magic power", Klein's *ḱred-, akin to cretar (“holy relic”), and a second that is the verb meaning "to place", the source of do;^[6][9] Klein calls the connection with cor (“heart”) a folk etymology.^[9] The doublet credo was borrowed later from the same Latin word.^[10][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A statement of the Christian faith, especially the Apostles' Creed: Old English.^[7][11] Bosworth–Toller quotes Se læssa créda, "the less or Apostles' creed", and the rule that every Christian man by right ought to know his creed.^[5] Barnhart records the Middle English form crede before 1225.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word also meant a recital of the creed as an act of devotion (1425),^[7] and it appeared in proverbial phrases such as "as sure as the creed" and "to know more than the creed", to be an expert.^[2] Weekley notes that the Apostles' Creed, traditionally ascribed to the Apostles, dates from the 4th century.^[12] From 1570 a creed was the whole religious faith of a community or person,^[7] and in the early 17th century it came to mean any system of belief: the OED's first example is from Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII (1623), which Barnhart dates 1613,^[7][10] while Word Origins puts the general sense in the early 16th century.^[13] The wider sense of a formula of religious belief, a confession of faith binding on a church, followed in 1676.^[7] A verb creed, to believe, was used from 1596 to 1652,^[7] and survived in Yorkshire dialect;^[14] in Scots a creed was also a severe rebuke or lecture.^[14]

Timeline

• Old English – a statement of Christian belief.^[7][5]
• before 1225 – Middle English crede.^[10]
• 1425 – a recital of the creed as an act of devotion.^[7]
• 1570 – the religious faith of a community or person.^[7]
• 1596 – verb, to believe (obsolete by 1652).^[7]
• 1623 – a system of belief on any subject.^[7]
• 1676 – a formula of religious belief binding on a church.^[7]
• 1819 – belief in a single fact (rare).^[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A short formal statement of the essential points of Christian belief, such as the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed.
2. Any set of beliefs or principles that guides someone's actions: a political creed.
3. A religious faith: people of every race and creed.

Word family

• creedal
• creeded
• creedless
• creedlessness
• Apostles' Creed
• Athanasian Creed
• Nicene Creed

Related words

• credible
• credibility
• credit
• creditable
• creditor
• credence
• credential
• credo
• credendum
• credent
• credulity
• credulous
• credenza
• miscreant
• recreant
• grant

Usage notes

Other words spelled creed are rare: a dialect name of duckweed in Wiltshire, a variant of greeds (1880),^[7][14] and Creed, a tape-printing telegraph machine named after its inventor F. G. Creed (1911).^[7][15]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
15. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins