Faith & RitualGreek → English
Idolatry
/aɪˈdɒlətri/noun
Worship of an image or object as a god; by extension, excessive devotion to anything.
The Greek roots
εἴδωλον
eídōlon
image, phantom
λατρεία
latreía
worship, hired service
Literally: “worship of images”
The story of the word
Greek-speaking Jews and then Christians welded the compound together to name what their neighbours did in temples. In Homer an eidōlon is something stranger than a statue: the shade of a dead man, a phantom with the shape of a person and nothing inside it. Latreía originally meant paid service, work done for a wage, which is why later theologians insisted on separating it from the honour owed to saints.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Ecclesiastical Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
idolidylllatriaeidetic
In a sentence
The reformers smashed the windows and called the images idolatry.
His idolatry of the founder makes him useless in a board meeting.