Dictionary

numen en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈnuː.mən/ (US)
• /ˈnjuː.mən/ (UK)

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin nūmen.

Meanings

1. A divinity, especially a local or presiding god.
   • 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. 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:
   • Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who’d mothered over Oedipa’s so temperate youth? 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 76:
   • 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 […] 1671, Ralph Cudworth, chapter 4, in The True Intellectual System of the Universe:
2. An influence or phenomenon at once mystical and transcendent.
   • […]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. 1952 May, George Santayana, “I Like to Be a Stranger”, in The Atlantic:

Forms

Relateds

numinal · numinous