godhead

See also: Godhead

English

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English godhede, equivalent to god + -head (-hood). First attested in the Ancrene Wisse (ca. 1225); compare godhood and Dutch godheid as well as German Gottheit.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈɡɒd.hɛd/

Noun

godhead (countable and uncountable, plural godheads)

  1. Divinity or godhood, divine essence or nature.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, [] (King James Version), London: [] Robert Barker, [], →OCLC, Romans 1:20:
      For the inuisible things of him from the Creation of the world, are clearely seene, being vnderstood by the things that are made, euen his eternall Power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse:
    • 1906 May–October, Jack London, chapter 1, in White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC, part 4 (The Superior Gods), page 195:
      It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, and it is on power that god-head rests.
  2. (usually capitalized) God.
  3. (rare) Any deity or idol.
    • 1697, Virgil, “The Seventh Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. [], London: [] Jacob Tonson, [], →OCLC, page 405, lines 185–188:
      Adoring firſt the Genius of the Place, / Then Earth, the Mother of the Heav'nly Race, / The Nymphs, and native Godheads yet unknown, / And Night, and all the Stars that gild her ſable Throne,
  4. (by extension) An admired or influential person or entity.
    • 2007 June, Gregory Mone, “Invention: A New Breed of Mouse”, in Popular Science, volume 270, number 6, archived from the original on 17 December 2011, page 56:
      He pauses, as if hesitant to mention the godhead of computer design aloud, and adds, "Maybe even something Apple would be interested in."

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