Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A circular temple in Rome, completed around AD 125 and dedicated to all the gods.
  • noun A temple dedicated to all gods.
  • noun All the gods of a people considered as a group.
  • noun A public building commemorating and dedicated to the heroes of a nation.
  • noun A group of persons most highly regarded for contributions to a field or endeavor.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A temple or shrine dedicated to all the gods.
  • noun All the divinities, collectively, worshiped by a people: as, one of the divinities of the Greek pantheon.
  • noun [capitalized] A work treating of the whole body of divinities of a people: as, Tooke's “Pantheon.
  • noun [capitalized] A memorial structure in honor of the great men of a people, or filling some such purpose; especially, such a building serving as a mausoleum, as the Pantheon (church of Ste. Geneviève) in Paris. Westminster Abbey is often called the Panthcon of the British.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A temple dedicated to all the gods; especially, the building so called at Rome.
  • noun The collective gods of a people, or a work treating of them.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a temple dedicated to all the gods
  • noun mythology all the gods of a particular people or religion, particularly the ancient Greek gods residing on Olympus, considered as a group
  • noun a category or classification denoting the most honored persons of a group

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun all the gods of a religion
  • noun (antiquity) a temple to all the gods
  • noun a monument commemorating a nation's dead heroes

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English Panteon, Pantheon, from Latin Panthēum, Panthēon, from Greek Pantheion, shrine of all the gods, from neuter sing. of pantheios, of all the gods : pan-, pan- + theos, god; see dhēs- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

First coined 1300, from Ancient Greek Πάνθειον (Pantheion, "a temple of all gods"), neuter of πάνθειος (pantheios, "of or common to all gods"), from πᾶν (pān, "all, everything"), neuter of πᾶς (pās, "all, the whole") + θεῖος (theios, "of or for the gods"), from θεός (theos, "god")

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Examples

  • I wasn't expecting an upset, but back in my undergrad days, I would have guessed at least a 70-30 split — the pantheon is a harsh mistress.

    Archive 2007-08-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2007

  • I wasn't expecting an upset, but back in my undergrad days, I would have guessed at least a 70-30 split — the pantheon is a harsh mistress.

    Gold stars and red pen Matthew Guerrieri 2007

  • If your pantheon is more complex, say you have two competing factions of deities, laid over an older, animist pattern, that tells you a lot about the social evolution of the society: maybe not-Buddhism came along and supplanted not-Shinto.

    MIND MELD: Gods by the Bushel 2009

  • Conversely, the other advantage to a pantheon is that it bestows distance when you are going into God territory.

    MIND MELD: Gods by the Bushel 2009

  • Protests over plan to bury President in Polish pantheon

    WN.com - Photown News 2010

  • Enterprise Conent Management still has a place in the acronym pantheon, but that place is an increasingly limited one ...

    Intelligent Enterprise 2010

  • Protests over plan to bury President in Polish pantheon

    WN.com - Business News 2010

  • Enterprise Conent Management still has a place in the acronym pantheon, but that place is an increasingly limited one ...

    Intelligent Enterprise 2010

  • Protests over plan to bury President in Polish pantheon

    WN.com - Photown News 2010

  • Protests over plan to bury President in Polish pantheon

    WN.com - Photown News 2010

Comments

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  • She reigns

    in eventual pantheons

    of book store cahiers ...

    Raymond Farr, in As/Is

    December 21, 2006

  • 1st

    August 12, 2020