deity
pronunciation
How to pronounce deity in British English:
UK [ˈdeɪəti]
How to pronounce deity in American English:
US [ˈdeɪəti]
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- Noun:
- any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force
Word Origin
- deity
- deity: [14] Deity comes via Old French deite from late Latin deitās ‘godhood, divinity’, a derivative of Latin deus ‘god’. This traces its ancestry back to Indo-European *deiwos, which has links with other words meaning ‘sky’ and ‘day’ and probably comes ultimately from a base with the sense ‘bright, shining’. Amongst its other descendants are English divine, the personifications Greek Zeus, Latin Iuppiter and Iovis (source of English jovial), and Old English Tīw (source of English Tuesday), and Sanskrit dēvás ‘god’ (source of English deodar ‘variety of cedar’ [19], literally ‘divine wood’); the superficially similar Greek theós ‘god’, however, is not related.English is also indebted to Latin deus for deify [14] and, via a somewhat circuitous route, the joss [18] of joss-stick, a Pidgin English word which comes from deos, the Portuguese descendant of deus.=> divine, joss, jovial, tuesday
- deity (n.)
- c. 1300, "divine nature;" late 14c., "a god," from Old French deité, from Late Latin deitatem (nominative deitas) "divine nature," coined by Augustine from Latin deus "god," from PIE *deiwos (see Zeus).
Example
- 1. He could have remained on portugal 's atlantic coast , a local deity .
- 2. If the deity felt the message was important , presumably it could have been presented clearly and plainly .
- 3. Like a deity , radio spectrum is invisible , omnipresent and commands awesome power .
- 4. To help uncover the complexities of india 's uneven rise , the shiva rules uses as a loose reporting metaphor shiva , the popular hindu deity of destruction and rebirth .
- 5. The planet - the only planet named after a female - may have been named for the most beautiful deity of her pantheon because it shone the brightest of the five planets known to ancient astronomers .