Faith & RitualGreek → English
Empyrean
/ˌɛmpaɪˈriːən/noun
The highest heaven, held in ancient cosmology to be made of pure fire or light.
The Greek roots
ἐν
en
in
πῦρ
pŷr
fire
Literally: “in the fire”
The story of the word
Ancient cosmology stacked the elements and put fire at the top, so the outermost heaven was ἔμπυρος, in flame. Christian writers kept the position and changed the substance, making it a heaven of light and the dwelling place of God rather than a sphere of burning; Dante ends the Paradiso there, outside space and time altogether. The same πῦρ gives pyre, pyrite and empyreuma, the burnt smell of scorched organic matter.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
Same family
pyrepyritepyrotechnicempyreuma
In a sentence
Milton sets the war in heaven below the empyrean itself.
Her reputation had risen to the empyrean and stayed there.