Noun: heathendom
| Singular | heathendom |
| Plural | heathendoms |
Sample Sentences
-
The priest argued to the king that unless clerics accompanied the colony ship, the colony would soon descend into heathendom and barbarity.
-
My aunt considered all of Europe to be heathendom, and refused to visit us in Amsterdam on religious grounds.
-
The Crusaders meant to wrest Jerusalem from heathendom, but they managed to pillage a number of lands in Christendom along the way.
-
Ziegenbalg mentioned some major forms of heathendom (African, American, old European)[…] [2011, Urs App, The Birth of Orientalism, page 102:]
Nouns inflected like heathendom
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English hæthendom, from Old English hǣþendōm; equivalent to heathen + -dom. OED records a single attestation in the period between 1230 and 1840, a (nonce?) occurrence in J. Law, Proposals and reasons for constituting a council of trade in Scotland (1701, p. 233). Otherwise replaced by Middle English hethenesse in the later Middle English period and heathenism in the 17th and 18th centuries. Cognate with Dutch heidendom, Old High German heidentuom (German Heidentum), Old Norse heiðindómr (Swedish hedendom). See: Middle English Nouns '
hæthendom', Dutch Nouns '
heidendom', German Nouns '
Heidentum', Old Norse Nouns '
heiðindómr', Swedish Nouns '
hedendom'.