Wiktionary

mythos

See also: Mythos

English

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WOTD – 3 July 2018

Etymology

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Borrowed from Late Latin mȳthos (“myth”), from Ancient Greek μῦθος (mûthos, “report, tale, story”). Doublet of myth.

The plural form mythoi is from Ancient Greek μῦθοι (mûthoi), and the form mythoses from mythos +‎ -es.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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mythos (countable and uncountable, plural mythoi or mythoses)

  1. Anything transmitted by word of mouth, such as a fable, legend, narrative, story, or tale (especially a poetic tale).
    • 1760, [John Marchant], “POLY′MYTHY”, in A New Complete English Dictionary, Peculiarly Adapted to the Instruction and Improvement of Those who have not had the Benefit of a Learned or Liberal Education, [...], London: Printed for J. Fuller, →OCLC:
      POLY′MYTHY (S[ubstantive]) in Poetry, a fault in an epic poem, when inſtead of a ſingle mythos, or fable, there is a multiplicity of them.
  2. A story or set of stories relevant to or having a significant truth or meaning for a particular culture, religion, society, or other group; a myth, a mythology.
    • 1845, David Friedrich Strauss, “Natural Explanation of the Rationalists—Eichhorn—Paulus”, in The Life of Christ, or A Critical Examination of His History: [...] Translated from the German, and Reprinted from an English Edition, 2nd American edition, New York, N.Y.: Re-published by G. Vale, at the Beacon Office, 94 Roosevelt Street, →OCLC, page 26:
      [T]he critics above named, define in a general manner a mythos as the exposition of a fact, or of a thought, under the historical form—it is true; but yet, under the form stamped upon it by the symbolical genius and language of antiquity, so full of warmth and imagination. At the same time, mythoses have been distinguished into different kinds. The mythoses of history, that is to say, the recital of real events colored only by the ancient opinions, which confounded the divine with the human, the natural with the supernatural,—also the philosophic mythoses, those in which a simple thought, a speculation contemporaneous, or a novel idea are enveloped.
    • 1887 October, W[illiam] T[orrey] Harris, “The Spiritual Sense of Dante’s ‘Divina Commedia’”, in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, volume XXI, number IV, St. Louis, Mo.: G. Knapp and Co., printers; New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, →JSTOR, →OCLC, § 40 (The Sun Myth; its Significance as Physical Description of Mind), page 427:
      But the most highly gifted of all peoples in poetic insight were the Greeks. They possessed supreme ability in the interpretation of nature as expression of spirit. They have countless mythoses to express the immortality of man and his after-life.
    • 1996, James Lambert, The Macquarie Book of Slang, Sydney: Macquarie Library, page ix:
      The term cobber [...] is still a part of our linguistic culture, and mateship is still a part of our cultural mythos.
    • 2011, Bob Alexander, ““We buried him on the side of a road””, in Rawhide Ranger, Ira Aten: Enforcing Law on the Texas Frontier, University of North Texas Press, →ISBN, page 25:
      Most of the bad broncos, if mythos is peppered with a slight shake of practicality, were more-likely-as-not just a cavvyard of crow-hoppers.
    • 2017 October 27, Alex McLevy, “Making a Killing: The Brief Life and Bloody Death of the Post-Scream Slasher Revival”, in The A.V. Club‎[1], archived from the original on 5 March 2018:
      Hollywood studios had largely stopped producing the horror subgenre, save for the odd hybrid vehicle (the sci-fi slasher of Species, the cartoonish evil of Leprechaun), and the iconic killers of the ’80s—Freddy [Krueger], Jason [Voorhees], Michael Myers—had either devolved into needlessly complex mythos or unintentional self-parody, and sometimes both.
  3. (by extension) A set of assumptions or beliefs about something.
    • 2016, Daniel Shapiro, “Uncovering Your Mythos of Identity”, in Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts, New York, N.Y.: Viking, →ISBN, page 139:
      Of all the stories that fuel conflict, none affects you more than your mythos of identity—the core narrative that shapes how you see your identity in relation to that of the other side. In a conflict, you are likely to regard yourself as the victim and the other as the villain. You fill in the details of this mythos with personal grievances and accusations. Of course, the other side also sees the conflict through a mythos—and in theirs they are the victim. Unless you transform the fundamental way you relate to each other—your mythos—your conflict will remain.
  4. (literature) A recurring theme; a motif.
    • 1984, Kathryn Hume, “Fantasy as a Function of Form”, in Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature, New York, N.Y.: Methuen, →ISBN; republished Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2014, →ISBN, part III (The Functions of Fantasy: why Use Fantasy?), page 151:
      To get most benefit from the four mythoi, one must avoid making two errors. First, a work embodying the comic mythos may be called comic but should not be confused with comedy since the latter term has too many meanings that are exclusively dramatic. The same stricture applies to tragedy and the tragic mythos. The second error is to assume that a work embodying the ironic mythos is an anti-romance.
    • 2011, Laura Vivanco, “Mythoi”, in John Lennard, editor, For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance (Genre Fiction Monographs), Penrith, Cumbria: Humanities-Ebooks, →ISBN, page 76:
      In addition to mythoi drawn from myths and fairy tales, romances also employ mythoi derived from chivalric romances.

Synonyms

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Translations

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story or set or stories relevant to a particular culture or some other group

Further reading

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Anagrams

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French

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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mythos m

  1. plural of mytho

Latin

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Etymology

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From Ancient Greek μῦθος (mûthos).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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mȳthos m (genitive mȳthī); second declension

  1. a myth

Declension

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Second-declension noun (Greek-type).

Case Singular Plural
Nominative mȳthos mȳthī
Genitive mȳthī mȳthōrum
Dative mȳthō mȳthīs
Accusative mȳthon mȳthōs
Ablative mȳthō mȳthīs
Vocative mȳthe mȳthī

Synonyms

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Descendants

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  • French: mythe
    • Turkish: mit

References

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