Word.ws English Dictionary

adyta

adyta is the plural of adytum.

adyta is the plural of adyton.

Meaning of adytum

Noun

adytum (plural adytums or adyta)

  1. (Ancient Greece) The innermost sanctuary or shrine in a temple, from where oracles were given.
    • Let us now with minds free of paſſion, enter the adytum with an intent to find out its true figure, to examine what it really was, and what it is. […] This point is properly the door-way or entrance into the adytum, as a wicket or little door, whilſt the jambs of the hithermoſt trilithons preſent...1740, William Stukeley, “Of the Cell or Adytum of Stonehenge. Of the Surgeons Amphitheater, London.”, in Stonehenge: A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids, London: Printed for W. Innys and R....
    Synonyms:
    adyt, adyton
  2. (broadly) A private chamber; a sanctum.
    • Although it was the custom for the priestesses to affect a holy fury, a species of temporary insanity, in the delivering of their oracles, yet it was also the custom to write them on the leaves of trees, and to deposit them at the entrances of their caves, or the adyta of their temples; and it was...1829, Godfrey Higgins, chapter I, in The Celtic Druids; or, An Attempt to Shew, that the Druids were the Priests of Oriental Colonies who Emigrated from India, […], London: Rowland Hunter, […]; Hurst...

Meaning of adyton

Noun

adyton (plural adyta or adytons)

  1. Synonym of adytum.
    • The temple had no opisthodomos as usually understood, but this name was given at Didyma to the west wall of the adyton. The adyton floor was covered with a pavement in later centuries, but in the third century B.C. a grove of bay trees, it appears, grew in the adyton (and this is probably true of...1988, Joseph Eddy Fontenrose, Didyma: Apollo's Oracle, Cult, and Companions, University of California Press, page 40
    Synonyms:
    adytum

Questions about adyta

What is adyta the plural of?
Adyta is the plural of adytum.

Words near adyta in the dictionary

  1. adynerigenin
  2. adynerin
  3. adyponectin
  4. adysplasia
  5. adyt
  6. adyta
  7. adytal
  8. adyton
  9. adytons
  10. adyts
  11. adytum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: adyta (page history and authors); adytum (page history and authors); adyton (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.

Last updated:

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