deity
nounUK /ˈdiː.ɪ.ti/ · US /ˈdi.ə.ti/
Etymology From Middle French deité, from Latin deitās.
1
Synonym of divinity: the state, position, or fact of being a god.
- Thou seest all, yet none at all sees thee: / All that is by the working of thy Deitee.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 4:
2
A supernatural divine being; a god or goddess.
- The fact that in most lands the moon was originally a female deity has led many historians to dispute the superiority of the moon over the sun in ancient mythology.1941, George Ryley Scott, Phallic Worship: A History of Sex and Sex Rites in Relation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the Present Day, London: T. Werner Laurie, page 15:
- Every act of a Roman, from birth to death, from dawn to night, was controlled and supervised by some presiding deity.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 209:
1 more example
- The crux of monotheism is not only belief in a single deity but belief in a deity who is different from everything else.2000, Kenneth Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 23:
- Synonyms
- god
- Derived terms
- deityhood, deityless, deitylike, deityship, demideity, lunar deity, moon deity, multideity, overdeity, semideity, solar deity, subdeity, sun deity
- Hyponyms
- faineant deity, household deity, tutelary deity