Faith & RitualGreek → English
Heretic
/ˈhɛrətɪk/noun
Someone who holds a belief that the church of the day condemns as false.
The Greek roots
αἱρετικός
hairetikós
able to choose
Literally: “one who chooses”
Follow a root:αἱρετικός1 word
The story of the word
Paul's letter to Titus uses αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος, and translators have argued over it ever since: a man that is an heretick in the King James, a divisive person in most modern versions, because the Greek adjective means factious as much as doctrinally wrong. English has the word by about 1300, in time for the Cathars and the Lollards. It is the person behind heresy, and both turn on one idea, that choosing your own belief is itself the offence.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1300
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
heresyheresiarchdiaeresis
In a sentence
Galileo was tried as a heretic for arithmetic that nobody now disputes.