Word.ws English Dictionary

acheiropoieton

Syllables: achei·ro·poi·e·ton/eɪˈkaɪɹəʊpɔɪˌiːtən/

acheiropoieton noun: a religion icon (chiefly of Christ or the Virgin Mary) believed not to have been created by human hands; a miraculous image.

acheiropoieton: a religion icon (chiefly of Christ or the Virgin Mary) believed not to have been created by human...
Image: Anonymous ( Category:Artists ) Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

acheiropoieton (plural acheiropoieta)

  1. (chiefly Eastern Orthodoxy) A religion icon (chiefly of Christ or the Virgin Mary) believed not to have been created by human hands; a miraculous image.
    • These legends not only established the value of the Mandylion and the Vera Icon as authentic portraits of Christ, but also as acheiropoieta, i.e., images made without the intervention of human hands.1995, Maurits Smeyers, “An Eyckian Vera Icon in a Bruges Book of Hours, ca. 1450 (New York, Pierpoint Morgan Library, Ms 421)”, in Werner Verbeke et al., editors, Serta Devota in Memoriam Guillelmi...
    • An example of an acheiropoieton, or image made without human hands, the icon and its copies alike were believed to possess miraculous qualities that aided spiritual conversion.2003, Gauvin A[lexander] Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565–1610, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 10

Forms of acheiropoieton

pluralacheiropoieta

Origin of acheiropoieton

From Byzantine Greek ἀχειροποίητον (akheiropoíēton), from ἀ- (a-, “a-, the alpha privative”) + χείρ (kheír, “hand”) + ποιεῖν (poieîn, “to make”).

Questions about acheiropoieton

What does acheiropoieton mean?
Acheiropoieton means a religion icon (chiefly of Christ or the Virgin Mary) believed not to have been created by human hands; a miraculous image.
What part of speech is acheiropoieton?
Acheiropoieton is a noun.
How do you pronounce acheiropoieton?
Acheiropoieton is pronounced /eɪˈkaɪɹəʊpɔɪˌiːtən/ (UK).
What is the plural of acheiropoieton?
The plural of acheiropoieton is acheiropoieta.

Words near acheiropoieton in the dictionary

  1. acheirias
  2. acheiropodia
  3. acheiropody
  4. acheiropoieta
  5. acheiropoietic
  6. acheiropoieton
  7. acheirous
  8. acheive
  9. acheivement
  10. acheke
  11. achelate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: acheiropoieton (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-acheiropoieton.wav.

Cite this entry: “acheiropoieton.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/acheiropoieton. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.