HEATHEN • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Heathen

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/hˈiðən/ Listen

adjective

Heathen adj.

Gentile; pagan; as, a heathen author. "The heathen philosopher." "All in gold, like heathen gods."

Barbarous; unenlightened; heathenish.

Irreligious; scoffing.

noun

Heathen n. (pl. heathens or collectively heathen)

An individual of the pagan or unbelieving nations, or those which worship idols and do not acknowledge the true God; a pagan; an idolater.

An irreligious person. "If it is no more than a moral discourse, he may preach it and they may hear it, and yet both continue unconverted heathens."

The heathen, as the term is used in the Scriptures, all people except the Jews; now used of all people except Christians, Jews, and Muslims. "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance."

Synonyms: Pagan; gentile. See Pagan.

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Etymology of 'Heathen'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Heathen" Quotes from Famous Books

... of Romulus and Remus; and when we emerge into the light of European record, we find the Jesuit missionaries preaching the gospel at St. Ignace and the Sault St. Mary almost as early as the so-called Cavaliers were planting tobacco at Jamestown, or the Pilgrims smiting the heathen at Plymouth. ...

— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... connected with some church, boy. You can't have been raised a heathen in America. Every Christian belongs or has belonged to some church or other ...

— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... he said; "but I do not see that much comes of them. I do not know that men are any better off than when there was nothing of that kind. The ways of men seemed to me better when they were called heathen. I want my ...

— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... long travel; but it is droll. He makes a salaam to the defunct kings, a neat bow to the Sudras, and a friendly wink at the Howadji, in a way that puts him cheek-by-jowl with them in a jiffy. He beats me all out in his positive sympathy with these miserable heathen. He has read so much that he knows about everything. The way the officials, English, too, treat him would make you think he was the son of a lord. He has a dignified condescension in his ...

— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... is gone but hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be a Man! For which last Evangel, the confirmation and rehabilitation of all other Evangels whatsoever, how can I be too grateful? On the whole, I suspect you yet know only Goethe the Heathen (Ethnic); but you will know Goethe the Christian by and by, and like that one far better. Rich showed me a Compilation* in green cloth boards that you had beckoned across the water: pray read the fourth volume of that, and let a man of your clearness of feeling say whether that was ...

— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

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