Hethenesse

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Archaic term for the condition of being unbelieving or pagan rather than Christian ; the collective territories or populations regarded as heathen by medieval writers
2. An old word for paganism, meaning the state of worshipping false gods ; a name for the lands and peoples outside Christendom in medieval usage
3. Heathenism, the religious condition of those who follow no revealed faith ; the heathen world, meaning the nations and communities viewed as pagan in earlier English

Etymology: Heathen began as a plain place name for people living out on the open heath, away from towns. Its Old English form, "hæðen", was shaped by the Gothic "haiþnō", which Bible translators used to render the Greek "ethnikos", meaning "of the nations," or peoples outside the Israelite tradition. A geographical label thus took on the sense of unbelieving outsider. The ending is the Old English abstract suffix "-nes", which turns an adjective into a noun for a state or quality, as in "good" becoming "goodness." Attached to heathen, it gives a noun for the condition of being a heathen, or for the practices and character attributed to heathen peoples. The form is recorded in Middle English, when the word was used mainly in religious writing.