idolatry

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English idolatrie, also spelled ydolatrie,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French idolatrie, recorded in Anglo-Norman and Old French from the 12th century.^[2][5][6] The French word is from Late Latin idolatria, found in the Vulgate (Acts 17:16),^[2] which Merriam-Webster Unabridged calls Medieval Latin^[7] and Etymonline a Vulgar Latin form.^[5] It is a shortened form of idololatria, used by Tertullian,^[2][5][3][7] from Ancient Greek εἰδωλολατρία (eidōlolatría, “worship of idols”),^[8][5][3] formed from εἴδωλον (eídōlon, “image, idol”) and λατρεία (latreía, “worship, service”).^[8][5][3][4] Barnhart relates the second element to λάτρον (látron, “pay, wages”).^[3] The OED compares Old Occitan ydolatria, Spanish idolatría (late 14th century) and Italian idolatria (before 1292).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The worship of idols, of any image or object taken to embody a god: about 1250, in the Middle English Genesis and Exodus, preserved in a manuscript of before 1325.^[2][9] Barnhart dates the word to about 1250 in the form ydolatrie,^[3] and Etymonline to the mid-13th century.^[5]

Semantic evolution

By about 1350 the word was also used for a particular idolatrous practice or form of worship.^[2] In religious writing it was extended to devotion to worldly things, above all wealth, regarded as equal to the worship of idols: Chaucer's Parson's Tale (about 1390) calls avarice a kind of idolatry.^[2] Chaucer and Gower used the form ydolatrie.^[10] The figurative sense, intense or excessive admiration of a person or thing, appears in 1569, in Grafton's Chronicle.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined the word as the worship of images, or of anything as God which is not God, and quoted Shakespeare's line "And, were there sense in his idolatry".^[11]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – the worship of idols.^[2][3]
• c. 1350 – an idolatrous practice or form of worship.^[2]
• c. 1390 – devotion to worldly things, such as wealth, likened to idol worship.^[2]
• 1569 – figurative, excessive devotion to or admiration of a person or thing.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The worship of a physical object, especially a man-made image, as a god: The prophets condemned the idolatry of the surrounding peoples.^[7][12][2]
2. Absolute religious devotion given to something that is not God.^[7][2]
3. Excessive admiration of or devotion to a person or thing: the idolatry surrounding the young singer.^[7][12][2]

Related words

• idol
• idolater
• idolatrous
• -latry

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
10. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins