Word.ws English Dictionary

docetism

UK/dəʊˈsiːtɪz(ə)m/US/doʊˈsiːtɪz(ə)m/

docetism noun: the belief that Jesus was fully divine and only appeared or pretended to be human and to suffer.

Noun

docetism (countable and uncountable, plural docetisms)

  1. The belief that Jesus was fully divine and only appeared or pretended to be human and to suffer.
    • His Passion and Resurrection in history were therefore not fleshly events, even if they seemed so; they were heavenly play-acting (the doctrine known as Docetism, from the Greek verb dokein, ‘to seem’).2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 124

Forms of docetism

pluraldocetisms
alternative formDocetism

Origin of docetism

From Docetae + -ism, from Late Latin Docetae, from Koine Greek Δοκηταί (Dokētaí) coined 197–203 CE by Serapion of Antioch, from Ancient Greek δοκεῖν (dokeîn, “to seem, to appear”). Related to latter component of synecdoche.

Words formed from docetism

Questions about docetism

What does docetism mean?
Docetism means the belief that Jesus was fully divine and only appeared or pretended to be human and to suffer.
What part of speech is docetism?
Docetism is a noun.
How do you pronounce docetism?
Docetism is pronounced /doʊˈsiːtɪz(ə)m/ (US).
What is the plural of docetism?
The plural of docetism is docetisms.

Words near docetism in the dictionary

  1. docents
  2. Docetae
  3. docetaxel
  4. docetic
  5. docetically
  6. docetism
  7. docetisms
  8. docetist
  9. docetistic
  10. docetists
  11. docetize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: docetism (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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