# myth

Pronunciation: say "MITH" /mɪθ/

## Noun

1. A commonly held but false belief; a popular but mistaken idea about a real person or event that exaggerates or idealizes the truth.
   - Simple: A belief that many people hold but that is not actually true.
   - _The myth that bulls are enraged by the color red persists despite evidence that they cannot see it._
   - _Several myths about the company's founder have grown more flattering with each retelling._
2. A traditional story embodying a belief about some fact or experience, often personifying the forces of nature; a sacred narrative about a god, a hero, or the origin of the world or a people.
   - Simple: An old story that explains the world through gods, heroes, or the forces of nature.
   - _The creation myth of the Norse describes the world emerging from a great void._
   - _In this myth, thunder is the sound of a god's hammer striking the mountains._
3. Traditional sacred stories considered collectively as a literary and cultural genre.
   - Simple: Old sacred stories taken together as one kind of storytelling.
   - _Comparative study of myth reveals striking parallels between distant cultures._
   - _His lectures trace how myth shaped the earliest written literature._
4. An invented story, theory, or concept with no basis in fact.
   - Simple: A made-up story or idea that someone invented.
   - _Critics dismissed the company's eco-friendly image as a marketing myth._
   - _He constructed an elaborate myth around his supposed wartime heroics._
5. A person or thing that exists only in imagination, or whose actual existence cannot be verified.
   - Simple: A person or thing that exists only in the imagination and may not be real.
   - _To overworked employees, the four-hour workday is still a myth._
   - _Some explorers insisted the city of gold was no myth but a real place yet to be found._
6. Someone or something that, through popular legend, inspires excessive or almost religious awe or admiration.
   - Simple: A person or thing that people admire so much they treat them almost like a legend.
   - _Decades after his last race, the driver remains a myth to motorsport fans._
   - _The band became such a myth that fans treated their early demos as sacred._

## Origin

It comes from the Ancient Greek "mûthos" (μῦθος), meaning word, speech, account, or fable, and has been used in English since 1830. It is a doublet of "mythos."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/myth (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).