Heretike

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who holds religious beliefs that oppose the official teachings of a church or faith
2. Someone whose opinions depart from established religious doctrine and are considered wrong by authorities
3. An individual who dissents from the orthodox dogma of a religious institution, often facing condemnation

Etymology: The spelling "heretike" is simply an older form of "heretic", preserved from Middle English, when the word was written in several competing ways. Its story starts in Ancient Greek, where "hairetikos" meant "able to choose" or "factious", and was built on "hairein", "to choose". Nothing in the original sense was negative; a person who chose a school of thought was simply choosing one. The shift toward condemnation came as the word passed into Ecclesiastical Latin as "haereticus", where it described someone who chose doctrines of their own over those of the Church. Medieval Latin and Old French ("eretique") carried it onward, and Middle English took it up as "heretyk" and "heretike". By then the sense of holding a belief the authorities had rejected was firmly established, so a word that once praised independent judgment had become a charge of religious error.