Mythology

How to spell mythology

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce mythology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mythology mean?

1. nounThe collection of traditional stories, legends, and beliefs belonging to a particular culture or religion.
2. nounThe academic study and analysis of myths and legendary stories.

Mythology in a sentence

• Greek mythology is full of gods, heroes, and monsters.

• She wrote her thesis on comparative mythology across ancient cultures.

• The museum exhibit traced figures from Norse mythology across centuries.

• The lecturer specialised in the mythology of early agricultural societies.

Where does mythology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches back to the Greek mythos, which simply meant a spoken story, a tale, or a piece of speech, with none of the modern overtones of falsehood. The Greeks paired it with logia, derived from logos meaning 'word, account, or study', to form mythologia, the telling or systematic treatment of legendary stories. Latin took it up as mythologia, and English borrowed the word in the early 1600s, first in the sense of a body of traditional tales and later for the scholarly study of them. The opening 'my' is pronounced with the short vowel of 'myth', and the spelling keeps the Greek 'y' rather than an 'i', which is the small trap writers face. The same logos element appears in countless companions such as biology and psychology, all signalling an organised body of knowledge.

How the word is built

• mytho- (from Greek mythos: story, tale)
• -logy (from logia: study or body of knowledge)