Deities

How to spell deities

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce deities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deities mean?

1. nounGods or goddesses; divine beings worshipped within a religion or mythology.

Deities in a sentence

• The ancient temple was dedicated to several local deities.

• The museum exhibit explained how various deities were depicted in early art.

Where does deities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin deus, which simply meant 'god', and its later noun deitas, meaning 'godhood' or 'divine nature'. That Latin abstract noun was itself coined by the Christian writer Augustine in late antiquity to capture the idea of divinity as a quality. English took the word in through Old French deite during the 1300s, and the spelling settled into 'deity'. The root deus is a close relative of the Latin dies 'day' and of the Greek and Sanskrit words for the bright sky and its gods, all reaching back to an ancient root meaning 'to shine'. You can still see the same deus inside familiar words such as 'divine' and 'deify', and the plural 'deities' simply adds the regular -es ending, with the tricky part being the unstressed -ei- vowel pair that writers often reverse.

How the word is built

• dei- (from Latin deus: god)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix meaning state or quality)
• -es (plural marker)