Faith & RitualGreek → English
Neophyte
/ˈniːəfaɪt/noun
A beginner at something, or a recent convert to a faith.
The Greek roots
νέος
néos
new, young
φυτόν
phytón
plant, growth
Literally: “newly planted”
The story of the word
In Greek, νεόφυτος described a seedling just set in the ground. The First Letter to Timothy borrowed the gardening word for a man newly planted in the faith, warning that such a person should not be made a bishop, and Latin took it over intact. English had it by the 1550s. The horticultural sense never crossed over, but the metaphor is still doing all the work.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1550s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
epiphyteneolithicphytoplanktonneoclassical
In a sentence
Three years in and he still gets treated like a neophyte at the Monday meeting.
The order took in six neophytes that spring.