heathen

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adj

Definition: not believing in god
Antonyms: believing, godly, religious

from Gothic
This word originated in Bulgaria

The woman was an outsider. She was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia, definitely not one of the Jews to whom Jesus had been ministering. Chapter 7 of the Book of Mark tells us that Jesus met her when he went up the Mediterranean coast to the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon. There this woman asked Jesus to drive out a demon in her daughter. He hesitated to heal anyone other than his own people, saying rather harshly, "Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." But the foreign woman had a ready answer: "Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." That was enough. "For this saying you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter," said Jesus, and it was so.

Three centuries later, when Bishop Wulfilas of the Visigoths was translating this story into his native tongue, he described the woman's otherness by saying she was haithno, our heathen. This may just have been to say she was figuratively living on the heath, out in the countryside away from the community. But apparently thanks to Wulfilas's choice of words, the religious meaning of heathen as "outside the faith" spread to the other Germanic languages, including English, as they changed their allegiance from heathen to Christian. The word appears in English sermons written as long ago as the year 971.

In our Germanic branch of the Indo-European language, the oldest documents by far are written in Gothic, the language of the Goths who were so helpful in bringing the Roman Empire to a close. Most of the Gothic we know is in Wulfilas's fourth-century translation of some parts of the Bible, preserved in an elegant sixth-century version with gold and silver letters on purple parchment, the Codex Argenteus now at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Wulfilas probably did his writing in the land we now know as Bulgaria; Goths at other times went as far north as Ukraine and Poland, as far west as Italy and Spain. There were some Gothic speakers in the Crimea on the Black Sea as late as the eighteenth century, but the language is extinct now. Aside from this one example of heathen, East Germanic Gothic and the West Germanic English had little to say to each other.

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A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce

n.

A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

    "The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison.  He's
        A Christian philosopher.  I'm
    A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
        Addicted too much to the crime
        Of religious discussion in my rhyme.
    
    Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
        On a modus vivendi -- not they! --
    Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
        And I haven't been reared in a way
        To joy in the thick of the fray.
    
    For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
        And the truth of it I aver:
    Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
        And 'ite, an 'ie, or an 'er --
        And I'm down upon him or her!
    
    Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
        Toleration -- that's all very well,
    But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
        And he's running -- I know by the smell --
        A secret and personal Hell!
                                                           Bissell Gip

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For a list of words related to heathen, see:

• Behavior or Personality
• Individuals and Titles - heathen: pagan, esp. nonbeliever in Christian, Hebrew, or Muslim God

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See words rhyming with "heathendom."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Heathen.

Dansk (Danish)
n. - hedning
adj. - hedensk

Nederlands (Dutch)
heiden, barbaar, afgodendienaar, heidens, barbaars

Français (French)
n. - païen, barbare
adj. - païen

Deutsch (German)
n. - Heide
adj. - heidnisch

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (θρησκ.) εθνικός, ειδωλολάτρης, παγανιστής
adj. - (θρησκ.) ειδωλολατρικός, παγανιστικός, πρωτόγονος, βάρβαρος

Italiano (Italian)
pagano

Português (Portuguese)
n. - pagão (m)
adj. - irreligioso

Русский (Russian)
язычник, языческий

Español (Spanish)
n. - pagano
adj. - pagano

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hedning, barbar
adj. - hednisk

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
异教徒, 粗野的人, 野蛮人, 异教的, 野蛮的

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 異教徒, 粗野的人, 野蠻人
adj. - 異教的, 野蠻的

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 이교도, 이방인, 미개인
adj. - 이교도의, 야만의, 신앙심이 없는

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 異教徒の, 異教の, 不信心の, 野蛮な
n. - 異教徒, 無宗教者, 野蛮人, 未開人

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الوثني, الهمجي (صفه) وثني, غير متمدن‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עובד-אלילים, גוי, כופר, פרא-אדם, אדם חסר תרבות ומוסר‬
adj. - ‮חסר דת, ברברי, חסר עקרונות מוסר, כופר, של כופרים או כפירה‬

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