Ethos
/ˈiːθɑːs/noun
The characteristic spirit of a group, community or institution, shown in what it takes for granted.
The Greek roots
Literally: “settled habit of character”
The story of the word
The oldest sense is geographical. In Homer and Hesiod the plural means the accustomed haunts of animals, the places a creature is always found, and only later does it mean the settled habits of a person. Aristotle made ethos one of the three means of persuasion in the Rhetoric, next to pathos and logos: the credibility the speaker carries in before opening his mouth. The related adjective ἠθικός gives us ethics.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 1851
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The ethos of the place is that nobody eats lunch at their desk.
You cannot write an ethos into a handbook and expect it to take.