gnosis

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek γνῶσις (gnôsis, “inquiry, investigation, knowledge”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} which Klein and Dictionary.com take through New Latin.^[7][8] The Greek noun comes from the root of γιγνώσκω (gignṓskō, “to come to know, perceive”),^[2][4][9] and Etymonline traces it to Proto-Indo-European *gnō-ti-, from the root *gno- (“to know”),^[3] the source also of English know.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A special knowledge of spiritual mysteries: 1703, in S. Parker's translation of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History.^[2][3][9] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to the late 16th century instead,^[6][10] while Dictionary.com has 1695–1705 and Collins the 18th century.^[8][11]

Semantic evolution

In Greek the word covered a knowing, a judicial inquiry and a being known, and Christian writers narrowed it to a higher knowledge of spiritual things.^[3][2] English took it in that narrowed sense, often with reference to what the Gnostics claimed to possess,^[2][12] and the Shorter Oxford specifies, in theology, a redemptive knowledge of God and of the origin and destiny of humankind.^[6] The related gnostic was already in English in the 16th century.^[5] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also has the wider sense of cognition or the act of knowing.^[9]

Timeline

• 1703 – a special knowledge of spiritual mysteries.^[2][12]

Meanings

Noun

1. Esoteric or intuitive knowledge of spiritual truths, especially as claimed by the ancient Gnostics.^{[4][9][11][2]}
2. The act or process of cognition or knowing.^[9]

Word family

• barognosis
• stereognosis

Related words

• agnostic
• diagnosis
• Gnostic
• Gnosticism
• prognosis
• gnome
• know

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)