deus¹

Meaning

1. masculinegod, deity
   [Hegio] Ergasile, salvē. [Ergasilus] Dī tē bene ament, Hēgiō.[Hegio] How are you, Ergasilus? [Ergasilus] May the gods be kind to you, Hegio.c. 200 BCE – 190 BCE, Plautus, Captivi 1.2.29
   Hic vērō, dē quō ego ipse tam multa nunc dīcō. Prō, dī immortālēs! Quid est? Quid valet?And as for him, the man that I myself have now spent so many words on. Good gods! What is he? What power does he exert?57 BCE, Cicero, De haruspicum responsis 42
2. masculinethe ancient Roman “Dī Penātēs,” personal or family gods of hearth and home, embodied as small statues or icons
   multa quoque et bellō passūs, dum conderet urbem, īnferretque deōs Latiō.And [Aeneas] also suffered much in war, until he could found a city, and could carry his gods into Latium. (Within the context of ancient Roman religious beliefs, the safe transfer of Aeneas’s family gods from Troy to Italy was symbolically as meaningful as the arrival of the man himself. See: Di Penates.)29 BCE – 19 BCE, Vergilius, Aeneis 1.5–6
3. masculineepithet of high distinction
   fēcī idem quod in Πολιτείᾳ deus ille noster Platō.I did the same thing as our good old everything, Plato, had done in his Republic.68 BCE – 44 BCE, Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 4.16
   Entelle, hērōum quondam fortissime frūstrā[…]Ubi nunc nōbīs deus ille, magister nēquīquam memorātus, Eryx?[…]"Entellus, once bravest of heroes, though in vain […] Where now is that divine Eryx [the Sicilian king], whom you have vaunted to be your teacher?29 BCE – 19 BCE, Vergilius, Aeneis 5.392–393

Latīnē defined in Latin in our graded readers

Choosing the right word Döderlein's Latin Synonyms

Declension

Phrases from Meissner's Latin Phrase-Book

opinio dei

belief in god.

deos esse negare

to deny the existence of the gods.

deum esse credimus

we believe in the existence of a God.

precari deum, deos

to pray to God.

templa deorum adire

to make a pilgrimage to the shrines of the gods.

qui deum esse negat

an atheist.

adhibere deo preces

to pray to God.

precari aliquid a deo

to pray to God.

Origins

From Old Latin deivos, from Proto-Italic *deiwos, from Proto-Indo-European *deywós. An o-stem derivative from *dyew- (“sky, heaven”), from which also diēs and Iuppiter. Details Doublet of dīvus: dẹ̄vos, -om, -ōs > dẹ̄os, -om, -ōs with regular loss of -v- before a rounded vowel; it was also lost between identical vowels, followed by contraction: *dẹ̄vẹ̄(s) > dī(s). As a result, the close -ẹ̄- escaped the regular raising to /ī/ of urban (but not dialectal) Latin, instead merging with /ē/, which itself underwent raising. The remaining genitive singular *dī was regularised to deī, while the vocative became part of the paradigm of the newly-reshaped dīvus. de- was later analogically introduced into the plural; the form diī(s) is absent from Plautus, and might have been reincorporated from a contraction of dīvī (with the same condition as before), or even be purely orthographic. Cognates with Ancient Greek Ζεύς (Zeús), Διεύς (Dieús)—archaic form of Ζεύς, Sanskrit देव (devá), Avestan 𐬛𐬀𐬉𐬎𐬎𐬀 (daēuua), Welsh duw, Lithuanian dievas, Latvian dievs, Persian دیو (div, “demon”). Despite its superficial similarity in form and meaning, not related to Ancient Greek θεός (theós) — the Latin cognate of the latter is Latin fānum.

Related words

Meaning

1. masculinesingularGod
   Gratus esses, o dee haeretice, si isses in dispositionem CreatorisYou would be thankful, oh you heretic god [of Marcion's], if you checked the allotment of the Creator207 CE – 208 CE, Tertullianus, Adversus Marcionem 1.29.8
   Ego sum Dominus Deus Abraham patris tui et Deus IsaacI am the Lord God, of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaacc. 347 CE – 420 CE, Hieronymus, Vulgate Genesis.28.13

Declension

Origins

From deus (“god, deity”).