HEATHEN • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Heathen

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/hˈiðən/ Listen

adjective

Heathen adj.

Gentile; pagan; as, a heathen author. "The heathen philosopher." "All in gold, like heathen gods."

Barbarous; unenlightened; heathenish.

Irreligious; scoffing.

noun

Heathen n. (pl. heathens or collectively heathen)

An individual of the pagan or unbelieving nations, or those which worship idols and do not acknowledge the true God; a pagan; an idolater.

An irreligious person. "If it is no more than a moral discourse, he may preach it and they may hear it, and yet both continue unconverted heathens."

The heathen, as the term is used in the Scriptures, all people except the Jews; now used of all people except Christians, Jews, and Muslims. "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance."

Synonyms: Pagan; gentile. See Pagan.

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Etymology of 'Heathen'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Heathen" Quotes from Famous Books

... for its spiritual zeal, and particularly was it lacking in its missionary spirit. These were difficulties which the ardent young preacher, Mr. Strong, had sought for many long months to overcome, and while the earnest missionary from Africa was pleading the cause of the heathen, the pastor praying with all his might for ...

— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... of Messianic prophecies in the guise of Sibylline oracles. The Sibyl, whom the superstitions of the time revered as an inspired seeress of prehistoric ages, was made to recite the building of the tower of Babel, or the virtues of Abraham, and again to prophesy the day when the heathen nations should be wiped out, and the God of Israel be the God of all the world. Although the fabrication of oracles is not entirely defensible, it is unnecessary to see, with Schuerer, in these writings a low moral standard among the Egyptian Jews. They were not meant ...

— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... sternly, "if you are a good little girl, and do as you are told, you may stay here with us, and this lady will be your mother, and I your father. Then you will be brought up as a lady instead of becoming a little heathen and ...

— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... de Medicis, turned from the vanities of this world and became a priest, Canada was the fashionable mission of the day, and the noble neophyte signalized his self-renunciation by giving of his great wealth for the conversion of the Indian heathen. He supplied the Jesuits with money to maintain a religious establishment near Quebec; and the settlement of red Christians took his musical name, which the region still keeps. It became famous at once as the first residence of the Jesuits and the nuns of the ...

— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life to do that—went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and sat down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was squatting, too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and a heathen gang that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and their deformed children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding chests, just to show that they're heathens. But he won out, this Jesueete friend ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

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