Demigoddess

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A female figure with divine ancestry who possesses partial godlike powers and is often regarded as a minor deity or heroine in mythology
2. A woman believed to have one divine parent and endowed with supernatural abilities or status between mortals and full gods
3. A mythological female being born of a god and a mortal, typically exhibiting extraordinary traits or supernatural influence without being a full deity

Etymology: Demigoddess is a plain compound: "demi-" joined to "goddess," and nothing about it is hidden in the grammar. The interest lies in the first half. "Demi-" traces back through Anglo-Norman "demi" and Middle English "demi" to Vulgar Latin "dimedius," a blend of Latin "dis-" (in two, apart) and "medius" (middle), so the sense is literally "half." Its ancestry runs even further back, into a Proto-Indo-European root for "two" and another for "middle," which is why the prefix carries the idea of splitting something into halves. English kept "demi-" as a productive prefix for half-size or half-rank things, such as demigod, demitasse and demisemiquaver. "Goddess" is an older English word, and the two parts were joined to describe a female figure who is only partly divine, mirroring "demigod" for a man.

Synonyms: half-goddess, minor goddess

Antonyms: goddess, human