Homily

The story of the word

ὁμιλία meant company and ordinary conversation, from ὅμιλος, a crowd; the related verb still means 'I talk' in Greek today. Early Christian preachers used it for the plain talk given after the reading, deliberately unlike the polished set-piece a trained orator would deliver. English took the church sense in the fourteenth century and then added the sneer, so a homily now is a lecture with the informality kept and the humility gone.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English

First recorded

14th century