Godkind

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The whole race of gods, considered together as a distinct kind of divine beings
2. A collective term for deities as a group, the divine people as opposed to mortals
3. The community or class of all gods taken as one body of supernatural beings

Etymology: "Godkind" is a plain compound: "god" joined to "-kind," the same suffix found in "mankind." The model for the formation was that older word, which suggests the coiners wanted a collective noun for the whole body of divine beings, parallel to how "mankind" names the human race as a group. The pattern is a little unusual, though. The native English "-kind" suffix usually attaches to nouns to name a kind or class, and "mankind" is the familiar example. Writers who used "godkind" were therefore extending that habit to deities rather than inheriting a long-standing term. The word has a close relative in Old English, "godcund," meaning "of the nature of God, divine, religious." That adjective was built from "god" with a different suffix, and it shows the same concern with divinity, but "godkind" is a separate formation that took the noun route instead.