myth

n.

1. 1. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth.
   2. Such stories considered as a group: the realm of myth.
2. A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal: a star whose fame turned her into a myth; the pioneer myth of suburbia.
3. A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.
4. A fictitious story, person, or thing: "German artillery superiority on the Western Front was a myth" (Leon Wolff).

[New Latin mȳthus, from Late Latin mȳthos, from Greek mūthos.]

For more information on myth, visit Britannica.com.

noun

1. A traditional story or tale that has no proven factual basis: fable, legend. See belief/unbelief, real/imaginary, religion.
2. A body of traditional beliefs and notions accumulated about a particular subject: folklore, legend, lore, mythology, mythos, tradition. See knowledge/ignorance.
3. Any fictitious idea accepted as part of an ideology by an uncritical group; a received idea: creation, fantasy, fiction, figment, invention. See belief/unbelief, real/imaginary.

n

Definition: fictitious story
Antonyms: fact, non-fiction, truth

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myth, a kind of story or rudimentary narrative sequence, normally traditional and anonymous, through which a given culture ratifies its social customs or accounts for the origins of human and natural phenomena, usually in supernatural or boldly imaginative terms. The term has a wide range of meanings, which can be divided roughly into ‘rationalist’ and ‘romantic’ versions: in the first, a myth is a false or unreliable story or belief

(adjective: mythical)

,

while in the second, ‘myth’ is a superior intuitive mode of cosmic understanding

(

adjective: mythic

).

In most literary contexts, the second kind of usage prevails, and myths are regarded as fictional stories containing deeper truths, expressing collective attitudes to fundamental matters of life, death, divinity, and existence (sometimes deemed to be ‘universal’). Myths are usually distinguished from legends in that they have less of an historical basis, although they seem to have a similar mode of existence in oral transmission, re‐telling, literary adaptation, and allusion. A mythology is a body of related myths shared by members of a given people or religion, or sometimes a system of myths evolved by an individual writer, as in the ‘personal mythologies’ of William Blake and W. B. Yeats; the term has sometimes also been used to denote the study of myths.

Verb: mythicize or mythologize.

See also archetype, myth criticism, mythopoeia. For a fuller account, consult Laurence Coupe, Myth (1997).

[De]

A narrative organizing data such as beliefs about transcendental powers, the origins of the universe, social institutions, or the history of the people. Viewed in functional terms myths serve to record and present the moral system whereby contemporary attitudes and actions are ordered and validated.

IN BRIEF: A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. — Warren G. Bennis.

Quotes:

"Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion." - Roland Barthes

"Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words." - Italo Calvino

"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths." - Joseph Campbell

"It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved." - Irwin Edman

"A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes." - James Feibleman

"There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to realize myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have succeeded, this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is realizable. Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is." - Eugene Ionesco

See more famous quotes about Myth

Dansk (Danish)
n. - myte, legende, gudesagn

Nederlands (Dutch)
mythe, allegorie, verzinsel, mythologie

Français (French)
n. - mythe, mythologie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Mythos, Gerücht

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μύθος, θρύλος

Italiano (Italian)
mito

Português (Portuguese)
n. - mito (m)

Русский (Russian)
миф

Español (Spanish)
n. - mito

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - myt, myter

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
神话, 虚构的人, 虚构的事

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 神話, 虛構的人, 虛構的事

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 신화, 지은 이야기

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 神話, 作り話, 架空のもの

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) خرافه, أسطورة‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מיתוס, אגדה, דבר בדוי‬

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