Faith & RitualGreek → English
Idol
/ˈaɪdəl/noun
An image worshipped as a god, or a person adored to a similar degree.
The Greek roots
εἴδωλον
eídōlon
image, phantom
Literally: “little form, likeness”
Follow a root:εἴδωλον3 words
The story of the word
In Homer the εἴδωλα are the shades in Hades, images of the dead with no weight to them, from εἶδος, form. The Septuagint translators then used the word for the carved images of foreign gods, and that single usage gave it its hostile edge for the whole Christian tradition. English idol arrives through Latin and French in the thirteenth century; the adored-performer sense is nineteenth-century and started in the theatre.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
idolatrykaleidoscopeidylleidetic
In a sentence
He met his idol at a signing and could not think of a single question.