Ethos

How to spell ethos

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ethos

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ethos mean?

1. nounThe characteristic spirit, values, or guiding beliefs of a community, organisation, or culture.

Ethos in a sentence

• The company built its ethos around honesty and long-term thinking.

• A strong work ethos runs through every department in the firm.

Where does ethos come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes directly from the Greek ēthos, which literally meant 'character', 'custom', or 'accustomed place', and was closely tied to the idea of a person's settled disposition. The same root gave the philosophers the word for 'ethics', since how a person habitually behaves was thought to reveal their moral character. Aristotle used ethos as a technical term in his Rhetoric to describe the persuasive force of a speaker's credibility and character. English adopted the word in the middle of the 1800s, keeping its Greek form intact rather than reshaping it, which is why it ends in the slightly unusual '-os' rather than the more English '-us'. That preserved Greek spelling is the main trap: writers familiar with Latinate endings sometimes reach for 'ethus', but the correct form keeps the 'o'.

How the word is built

• ethos (from Greek ēthos: character, custom, disposition)