numen

English

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Numen

Wikipedia

Etymology

From Latin nūmen.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnjuː.mən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈnuː.mən/
• Rhymes: -uːmən

Noun

numen (plural numina)

1. A divinity, especially a local or presiding god.
   • 1671, Ralph Cudworth, chapter 4, in The True Intellectual System of the Universe:

     The Egyptians were doubtless the most singular of all the Pagans, and the most oddly discrepant from the rest in their manner of worship; yet nevertheless, that these also agreed with the rest in those fundamentals of worshipping one supreme and universal Numen […]

   • 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 76:

     Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who’d mothered over Oedipa’s so temperate youth?

   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

     It was the solid and immovable tabernacle of the living numen whose son he had known, though but briefly and not intimately, in the flesh, and whose message he accepted with all his heart.

2. An influence or phenomenon at once mystical and transcendent.
   • 1952 May, George Santayana, “I Like to Be a Stranger”, in The Atlantic‎:

     […] but never did the places or the persons turn into idols for my irrational worship. It was only the numen in them that I loved, who, as I passed by abstracted, whispered some immortal word in my ear.

See also

• numinous
• numinal