god

Before Christianity reshaped English religious vocabulary, god was a small Germanic word for a deity—rather like Latin numen, a divine presence rather than necessarily one all-powerful ruler. Its deepest ancestry is disputed: the leading proposal connects it with PIE *ghut-, “that which is invoked,” imagining a god as the being summoned during a sacrifice; another connects it with a root meaning “poured,” perhaps evoking libations poured over a burial mound. Either way, it is not related to good, despite centuries of popular guesswork—and the old heathen gods were not exactly famous for moral perfection. The noun began life as grammatically neuter, but after Christianity spread through England it shifted toward masculine usage, helping distinguish the Christian God from other gods. Its Germanic cousin *gud-iga may even lie behind giddy, originally “possessed by a god,” so feeling dizzy was once rather like having a supernatural passenger in your skull. Remember the word as an invocation made solid: god may be the name for the being called upon, or perhaps the invisible presence imagined above the place where a libation was poured.