mythology
Pluralmythologies
- 1The body of myths belonging to a people, telling of their origins and history and of their gods, ancestors, and heroes.
Thor and Loki both come from Norse mythology, though comic books have reshaped them.
The museum's new wing traces the mythologies of the Aztec and Maya peoples through carved stone.
Similarmyths, lore, legends, folklore, mythos
Note
At root the word means telling stories: Greek muthología joins mûthos, "story," to légō, "to say." That is why, unlike most words in -logy, it names the stories themselves as readily as the study of them. It usually carries the name of a people or a region, as in Scandinavian or Norse mythology, and the plural mythologies sets several traditions side by side.
- 2A body of myths about a particular event, person, or institution.
Decades of films and songs have built a rich mythology around the outlaw.
The company's founding mythology centers on two friends tinkering in a garage.
Similarmyth, legend, mythos, lore
Note
The stories here gather around a single subject, an outlaw, a company, a nation's past, and grow with each retelling. The word often hints that they serve the people who tell them, as in the "victim mythology" a nation built around its part in the Nazi war. When the stress falls on plain falsehood rather than on storytelling, the word has moved to the misconceptions meaning.
- 3The false beliefs and attitudes that people hold about something and that shape how it is perceived.
The report set out to challenge the mythology surrounding immigration and crime.
Much of the mythology about left-handed people has no basis in fact.
Similarmyths, misconceptions
Note
Here the word is a verdict: calling a set of beliefs a mythology says they are false, however widely they are held. It usually takes about or surrounding, as in the mythology about a group or the mythology surrounding immigration and crime. Myth is the countable unit of the same idea; one false belief is a myth, and the whole web of them is a mythology.
- 4The elements that run through a fictional universe and together make it resemble a mythological world.
Later seasons leaned heavily on the show's alien-conspiracy mythology, leaving casual viewers lost.
The author spent years building the mythology of her fantasy world before writing the first chapter.
Note
Television critics and fans use the word for the backstory that runs through a long series, its hidden history, rules and recurring conspiracies. A newspaper review of The X-Files in 2000 could assume readers knew "their X-Files mythology," and set a light, tongue-in-cheek episode against it. Writers of fantasy fiction use it the same way for the invented history behind their worlds.
- 5The systematic gathering and study of myths.
Comparative mythology looks for shared patterns in the myths of different cultures.
He switched his major from history to mythology and folklore.
Practice
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Origin
First attested in Middle English in 1412, from Middle French mythologie, from Latin mythologia, from Ancient Greek muthología, related to muthologéō ("to tell tales"), ultimately from mûthos ("story") + légō ("to say"). By surface analysis, myth + -ology.