deity

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English deite, also deitee,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French deité,^{[5][6][7][8][9]} recorded in Anglo-Norman from 1113–19 for divinity or godhead.^[10] The French word, deitet in the 12th century,^[8] is a learned borrowing from Late Latin deitās (“divine nature”),^[6][5][8] a word coined by Augustine in “De Civitate Dei” after dīvīnitās,^[8][11][12] probably to render a Greek word for godhead.^[3][13][14] It is formed from Latin deus (“god”) and the suffix of -ity;^[6][8] its other Romance forms include Old Occitan deitat, Spanish deidad and Italian deità.^[8] Deus comes from Proto-Indo-European *deywós (“god”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *dyew- (“to shine; sky, heaven, god”),^[5][6][15] and is cognate with Old English Tīw, Old High German Zīo and Old Norse Týr, the names of a sky god.^[6][3] Ayto notes that the similar Greek word for "god" is not related.^[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

Divine nature, godliness: before 1300 (MED, in a manuscript of about 1330),^[2] about 1300 in Etymonline and Barnhart.^[5][6] The OED's first quotation, for the divine nature of God, is from Langland's Piers Plowman (1362).^[8]

Semantic evolution

Chaucer, in Troilus and Criseyde (about 1374), used it both for the rank of a god and, concretely, for a god;^[8][6] the concrete sense, a god or goddess among those a people worship, is now the main one.^[8][16] Etymonline dates the sense "a being to whom a divine nature is attributed" to the 1580s.^[5] Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost (1598) has the figurative sense, a person or thing worshipped as if divine,^[8] and the Deity, a supreme creator of the universe, is recorded from 1647, especially in natural theology.^[8] Johnson (1755) defined it first as "divinity; the nature and essence of God".^[17] The older sense survives in theology, as in debates on the deity of Christ.^[13][3]

Timeline

• c. 1300 – divine nature, godliness.^[2][5][6]
• 1362 – the divine nature of God, in Piers Plowman.^[8]
• c. 1374 – the rank of a god; a god, in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.^[8]
• 1580s – a being with a divine nature.^[5]
• 1598 – an object of worship, a person or thing deified.^[8]
• 1647 – the Deity, the Supreme Being.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A god or goddess: the river deity of the old town.^[16][3][8]
2. the Deity: God, the Supreme Being.^[16][3][8]
3. Divine nature or status; divinity, godhead: arguments over the deity of Christ.^[16][3][13]
4. The rank or position of a god.^[16][8]
5. A person or thing revered as supremely great or good.^[3][8]

Related words

• deicide
• deify
• divine
• divinity
• Tuesday
• jovial
• joss
• deodar

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
5. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
13. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
16. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.