Catechism
/ˈkætɪkɪzəm/noun
A summary of religious teaching set out as questions and answers, used for instruction.
The Greek roots
Literally: “a sounding down into the ears”
The story of the word
κατηχέω meant to sound something down into someone's ears, from κατά and ἠχέω, to echo. Christian instruction was oral by design, the teacher speaking and the catechumen answering back aloud, for centuries before anyone printed it. The book we now mean by the word is a Reformation product: Luther's Small Catechism of 1529 fixed the question-and-answer format, and Rome, Geneva and Canterbury all copied the shape while disagreeing about every answer.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Church Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
She could still recite the first question of the catechism forty years after leaving.
The training manual reads like a catechism, which is either reassuring or sinister.