undeify means to degrade from the state of deity; to deprive godness. It carries an Arena rating of 1408, earned across 19 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, undeify ranks #912 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #3,335 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #4,058 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #5,122 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words.
Why “undeify” is a great word
UNDEIFY — [Verb] To degrade from the state of deity; to deprive of divine status. From the English prefix un- (expressing reversal or deprivation) + deify (from Old French deifier, from Late Latin deificare, from Latin deus "god" + facere "to make"). First attested in 1637 in a translation by Robert Ashley. Unlike "euhemerize," which rationalizes gods into historical mortals, or "desecrate," which profanes a sacred object, to undeify is the theological or intellectual act of dethronement. It is the chisel scarring the marble face of a temple god, the silent omission of a name from a litany, the cold archival ledger re-categorizing a miracle as a meteorological event—the quiet, administrative unbuilding of a heaven.
Etymology
From un- + deify.
verb
- To degrade from the state of deity; to deprive godness.e.g.“An Idol may be undeified” — 1711 June 3 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “WEDNESDAY, May 24, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 73; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume I, New
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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