Goddess

How to spell goddess

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce goddess

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does goddess mean?

1. nounA female deity worshipped in a religion or mythology.

Goddess in a sentence

• The ancient temple was dedicated to a moon goddess.

• She wrote her thesis on the worship of a harvest goddess in Roman culture.

Where does goddess come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word builds on the Old English god, a native Germanic term for a deity that goes back to a Proto-Germanic root meaning roughly 'that which is invoked' or 'the one called upon'. The feminine ending -ess is not native, however: it came into English from French in the medieval period, ultimately from the Late Latin -issa, itself borrowed from Greek. English began stitching this borrowed suffix onto its own and other nouns from the 1300s onward, producing forms like 'lioness' and 'hostess', and 'goddess' first appears in this period. Because the base word god ends in a single d, writers added -ess directly and the spelling shows the doubled consonant, giving the tricky double-d, double-s pattern. The same -ess suffix and the same doubling logic explain why the word looks heavier than its short root suggests.

How the word is built

• god (deity)
• -ess (feminine suffix), with the d doubled before the suffix