numen
/ˈnjuː.mən/US/ˈnuː.mən/
numen noun: a divinity, especially a local or presiding god.
Noun
numen (plural numina)
- A divinity, especially a local or presiding god.
- The Egyptians were doubtless the most singular of all the Pagans, and the most oddly discrepant from the rest in their manner of worship; yet nevertheless, that these also agreed with the rest in those fundamentals of worshipping one supreme and universal Numen […]1671, Ralph Cudworth, chapter 4, in The True Intellectual System of the Universe
- Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who’d mothered over Oedipa’s so temperate youth?1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 76
- An influence or phenomenon at once mystical and transcendent.
- […]but never did the places or the persons turn into idols for my irrational worship. It was only the numen in them that I loved, who, as I passed by abstracted, whispered some immortal word in my ear.1952 May, George Santayana, “I Like to Be a Stranger”, in The Atlantic
Forms of numen
| plural | numina |
|---|
Origin of numen
Borrowed from Latin nūmen.
Words that rhyme with numen
Questions about numen
- What does numen mean?
- Numen means a divinity, especially a local or presiding god.
- What part of speech is numen?
- Numen is a noun.
- How do you pronounce numen?
- Numen is pronounced /ˈnjuː.mən/ (UK).
- What is the plural of numen?
- The plural of numen is numina.
Words near numen in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: numen (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-numen.wav.
Cite this entry: “numen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/numen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.