Faith & RitualGreek → English
Blasphemy
/ˈblæsfəmi/noun
Speech that insults God or what a religion holds sacred.
The Greek roots
βλασφημία
blasphēmía
profane speech, slander
Literally: “evil speaking”
Follow a root:βλασφημία1 word
The story of the word
The second half is clear: φήμη, speech or report. The first half is not, with βλάπτω, to harm, and βλάξ, stupid, both proposed and neither settled. What is certain is the doublet. Late Latin blasphemare came into Old French worn down to blasmer, English took that as blame, so blaspheme and blame are the same word arriving twice by different roads.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
blameeuphemismprophetfame
In a sentence
The charge was blasphemy, though what the pamphlet had really insulted was the magistrate.