mythos
/ˈmɪθoʊs/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.76 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Anything transmitted by word of mouth, such as a fable, legend, narrative, story, or tale (especially a poetic tale).
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "[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."
- "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."
- "The term cobber [...] is still a part of our linguistic culture, and mateship is still a part of our cultural mythos."
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmɪθoʊs/
- British English: /ˈmɪθɒs/