Word.ws English Dictionary

eschaton

UK/-tɒn//ˈɛs.kə.tɑn/

eschaton noun: the apocalypse; the approach of Christ’s reign immediately preceding the end of the world; a conception of or circumstance pertaining to this era.

Noun

eschaton (plural eschatons or eschata)

  1. The apocalypse; the approach of Christ’s reign immediately preceding the end of the world; a conception of or circumstance pertaining to this era.
    • Near-synonyms: Revelation, Armageddon
    • Only in the eschaton will God’s purpose gain its final fulfilment, a fulfilment, be it noted, which may still include some form of movement within a time-series.1953, F. W. Dillistone, “The Church and Time”, in Scottish Journal of Theology, volume 6, page 163
  2. (broadly) An end or fulfilment of history in general.
    • immanentize the eschaton
    • He, too, constructs a philosophical history towards an eschaton. In a peculiarly inverted manner he is among the believers in progress—the goal being the undoing of the things done.1949 December, Helmut Kuhn, “[Review of Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History]”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 46, number 25, →JSTOR, page...
    Synonyms:
    end of history

Examples of eschaton in a sentence

  • Without these sayings, the textual basis for saying Jesus expected an imminent eschaton becomes very slender.1994, Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, →ISBN, page 86:
  • And I think there is this eschaton that they [Silicon Valley's technologists] want to bring about in which the world ends in something like 2027.2025 September 4, Ross Douthat, quoting Dan Wang, “This Is Why America Is Losing to China”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New...

Synonyms of eschaton

Forms of eschaton

pluraleschatons
pluraleschata

Origin of eschaton

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἔσχατον (éskhaton, “last thing”), from the neuter singular of ἔσχατος (éskhatos, “last”).

Questions about eschaton

What does eschaton mean?
Eschaton means the apocalypse; the approach of Christ’s reign immediately preceding the end of the world; a conception of or circumstance pertaining to this era.
How do you use eschaton in a sentence?
Without these sayings, the textual basis for saying Jesus expected an imminent eschaton becomes very slender.
What part of speech is eschaton?
Eschaton is a noun.
How do you pronounce eschaton?
Eschaton is pronounced /ˈɛs.kə.tɑn/ (US).
What is the plural of eschaton?
The plural of eschaton is eschatons.

Words near eschaton in the dictionary

  1. eschatologisms
  2. eschatologist
  3. eschatologistic
  4. eschatologists
  5. eschatology
  6. eschaton
  7. eschatons
  8. eschaunge
  9. eschaunged
  10. eschaunges
  11. eschaunging

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eschaton (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:

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

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