Antichrist

How to spell antichrist

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce antichrist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does antichrist mean?

1. nounA great adversary expected to oppose Christ and deceive people before the end of the world, or anyone seen as fundamentally opposed to Christ.

Antichrist in a sentence

• The medieval sermon warned listeners about the coming of the antichrist.

• His thesis examined how different churches have interpreted the figure of the antichrist.

Where does antichrist come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek antikhristos, which joins anti, meaning 'against' or 'opposed to', with Khristos, meaning 'the anointed one', the title given to Jesus. The Greek Khristos itself was a translation of the Hebrew idea of the Messiah, the figure ceremonially anointed with oil, so the literal sense is 'one who stands against the anointed one'. The term appears in the New Testament letters of John, written in Greek in the first century, where it names both a coming end-times opponent and anyone who denies Christ. It travelled into English through Latin as antichristus and was already in use in Old English religious writing before 1000. The spelling trap lives in the second half: the silent stretch of 'christ' keeps the Greek 'ch' for the 'k' sound and the 'i' that sounds like 'eye', exactly as in the standalone word Christ.

How the word is built

• anti- (against, opposed to)
• christ (from Greek Khristos: the anointed one)