Heathenness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The condition of being without religious faith, or of holding beliefs considered pagan or unbelieving by others
2. The quality of living outside accepted religious belief, often viewed as a lack of faith or spiritual awareness
3. The state of being heathen, meaning a person or society that does not follow a major organized religion

Etymology: Heathenness is a plain compound: "heathen" with the suffix "-ness", which turns an adjective into a noun for a state or quality. The base word has a long history of its own. "Heathen" came into Old English as "hǣþen", a word tied to the heath, the open uncultivated land where people who lived outside the Christian world were imagined to dwell. The sense of "not Christian or Jewish" grew out of that picture of living beyond settled, cultivated country. The noun was built on the same root in Old English as "hǣþennes", meaning heathenism, heathenry or heathendom, that is, the condition or the body of practices of those outside the faith. Middle English later gave it the form "hethenesse", and the modern spelling "heathenness" carries the same meaning: the quality of being heathen, or lack of faith. The word has traveled through about a thousand years of English with its core sense intact, even as the suffix itself stayed a productive tool for forming abstract nouns like this one.

Synonyms: paganism, heathenism

Antonyms: piety, godliness