Word.ws English Dictionary

mytheme

/mɪθiːm/

mytheme noun: the essential kernel of a myth; a myth or mythic element that get passed along.

Noun

mytheme (plural mythemes)

  1. The essential kernel of a myth; a myth or mythic element that get passed along.
    • By the time the Cypria was composed, Greek poets were certainly familiar with the mytheme of a flood as a divine punishment.2025 December 12, Tom Hercules Davies, “Horses, Wheels, Languages: Greek, Mesopotamian and Indic Epic on the Eurasian Steppe”, in The Classical Quarterly, volume 75, number 1, page 17

Forms of mytheme

pluralmythemes

Origin of mytheme

From myth + -eme, popularized by Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Words formed from mytheme

Questions about mytheme

What does mytheme mean?
Mytheme means the essential kernel of a myth; a myth or mythic element that get passed along.
What part of speech is mytheme?
Mytheme is a noun.
How do you pronounce mytheme?
Mytheme is pronounced /mɪθiːm/.
What is the plural of mytheme?
The plural of mytheme is mythemes.

Words near mytheme in the dictionary

  1. mythbusting
  2. mythbusts
  3. mythconception
  4. mythconceptions
  5. mythe
  6. mytheme
  7. mythemes
  8. mythemic
  9. myther
  10. mythered
  11. mythering

Source and license

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