Word.ws English Dictionary

altarity

altarity noun: otherness exalted as if a religious concept.

Noun

altarity (uncountable)

  1. Otherness exalted as if a religious concept.
    • In his deconstruction of the modern subject via the thought of altarity, Taylor relies on the critique of Hegel developed in twentieth-century France...2001, Victor E. Taylor, Charles E. Winquist, Encyclopedia of postmodernism
    • Sacred altarity is the indescribable other that makes the describable possible...2005, Henry L. Ruf, Postmodern rationality, social criticism, and religion

Origin of altarity

Coined by Mark C. Taylor in Altarity (1987), from altar and alterity.

Questions about altarity

What does altarity mean?
Altarity means otherness exalted as if a religious concept.
What part of speech is altarity?
Altarity is a noun.

Words near altarity in the dictionary

  1. altared
  2. altarer
  3. altarers
  4. altarist
  5. altarists
  6. altarity
  7. altarless
  8. altarlet
  9. altarlets
  10. altarlike
  11. Altarnun

Source and license

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