Faith & RitualGreek → English
Orthodox
/ˈɔːθədɒks/adjective
Holding the beliefs that an established authority has approved.
The Greek roots
ὀρθός
orthós
straight, correct
δόξα
dóxa
opinion, belief
Literally: “right opinion”
The story of the word
Δόξα begins as what seems: appearance, then reputation, then opinion. Christian Greek pushed it toward glory, which is why a doxology praises rather than argues. The compound ὀρθόδοξος belongs to the church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, where deciding which opinion was the straight one was the entire business; heterodox was built on the same frame only in the seventeenth century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 1580s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
paradoxdoxologyheterodoxorthographyorthopedic
In a sentence
His views on interest rates were far from orthodox.
She was raised Orthodox and still fasts before Easter.