Religious

How to spell religious

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce religious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does religious mean?

1. adjectiveConnected with religion, or believing in and practising a faith.
2. adjectiveDone with great care, regularity, or strictness, as if from devotion.

Religious in a sentence

• The family held strong religious beliefs and attended services every week.

• He kept religious records of every expense throughout the project.

• The museum displayed religious artefacts from several ancient cultures.

• Her religious attention to detail meant the report had no errors.

Where does religious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin religiosus, meaning 'devout' or 'scrupulous about ritual', which was built on the noun religio, meaning reverence for the gods or a sense of binding obligation. The ancestry of religio is debated: the Roman writer Cicero connected it to relegere, 'to read over again' or 'to go through carefully', while later Christian writers preferred religare, 'to bind fast', imagining religion as a bond between people and the divine. English took the word in through Old French religieus during the 1200s, originally describing monks and nuns who were 'bound' by vows. Over time it broadened to mean anything connected with faith and worship, and it kept a second flavour from that Latin sense of scrupulousness, which is why we still speak of doing something with religious care. The tricky part of the spelling is the soft -gious ending, where the 'jus' sound is written g-i-o-u-s, a pattern shared with prodigious and contagious.

How the word is built

• relig- (from Latin religio: reverence, religious obligation)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)