Gods

How to spell gods

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gods

What does gods mean?

1. nounMore than one deity or supreme being worshipped in a religion or mythology.

Gods in a sentence

• Ancient Greek myths describe gods who quarrelled on Mount Olympus.

• The museum exhibit explained how Roman gods each governed a part of daily life.

Where does gods come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of god, which descends directly from Old English god, a deity or the supreme being. That word goes back to a Proto-Germanic form gudan, the source too of Dutch god and German Gott, and it most likely traces to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning either 'that which is invoked' or 'that on which libations are poured', so the very name may have grown out of acts of worship rather than describing the being worshipped. The lower-case word stayed entirely native and never picked up Latin or Greek dressing, which is why it is short and phonetically plain. The plural simply adds the regular -s, and the only mild trap is that the vowel sounds like 'gawd' yet is spelled with an o. A specially British theatrical use, 'the gods', for the highest and cheapest gallery seats, arose in the 1700s because those distant seats sat up near the painted heavens of the ceiling.

How the word is built

• god (from Old English god: deity)
• -s (plural)