deus

Meaning

1. (declension-2, irregular, masculine) god, deity
2. (declension-2, irregular, masculine) the ancient Roman “Dī Penātēs,” personal or family gods of hearth and home, embodied as small statues or icons
3. (declension-2, irregular, masculine) epithet of high distinction

Concepts

god

deity

God

divinity

godhead

demiurge

godhood

monotheism

Synonyms

dea

di

divus

Deus

caelicola

deitas

Translations

Gott

dieu

dios

dio

god

deus

tanrı

θεός

Gottheit

déu

Götter

xwedê

îlah

θεά

Pronounced as (IPA)

[ˈde.ʊs]

Etymology

From Old Latin deivos, from Proto-Italic *deiwos, from Proto-Indo-European *deywós. An o-stem derivative from *dyew- (“sky, heaven”), from which also diēs and Iuppiter.
Details
Doublet of dīvus: dẹ̄vos, -om, -ōs > dẹ̄os, -om, -ōs with regular loss of -v- before a rounded vowel; it was also lost between identical vowels, followed by contraction: *dẹ̄vẹ̄(s) > dī(s). As a result, the close -ẹ̄- escaped the regular raising to /ī/ of urban (but not dialectal) Latin, instead merging with /ē/, which itself underwent raising. The remaining genitive singular *dī was regularised to deī, while the vocative became part of the paradigm of the newly-reshaped dīvus. de- was later analogically introduced into the plural; the form diī(s) is absent from Plautus, and might have been reincorporated from a contraction of dīvī (with the same condition as before), or even be purely orthographic.
Cognates with Ancient Greek Ζεύς (Zeús), Ancient Greek Διεύς (Dieús), Sanskrit देव (devá), Avestan 𐬛𐬀𐬉𐬎𐬎𐬀 (daēuua), Welsh duw, Lithuanian dievas, Latvian dievs, Persian دیو (div, “demon”).
Despite its superficial similarity in form and meaning, not related to Ancient Greek θεός (theós) — the Latin cognate of the latter is Latin fānum.