cult

English

/kʌlt/

noun
Definitions
  • (chiefly) A group or sect of people with a deviant religious, philosophical or cultural identity, often existing on the margins of society or exploitative towards its members.
  • Devotion to a saint.
  • The veneration and religious rites given to a deity, esp. in a historical polytheistic context.
  • A religion that evolved out of another religion but has become a different religion through developing a radically different theology.
  • (informal) A group of people having an obsession with or intense admiration for a particular activity, idea, person or thing.

Etymology

Derived from French culte derived from Latin cultus (adoration, care, cult, culture, the act of cultivating, cultivation, veneration, cultivated, reverence) root from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (turn, move, going around, revolve, far, dwell, and therefore to sojourn, revolve around).

Origin

Proto-Indo-European

*kʷel-

Gloss

turn, move, going around, revolve, far, dwell, and therefore to sojourn, revolve around

Concept
Semantic Field

Motion

Ontological Category

Action/Process

Emoji
🙃

Timeline

Distribution of cognates by language

Geogrpahic distribution of cognates

Cognates and derived terms