religion
/ɹɪˈlɪd͡ʒ.ən/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
New Zealand/ɹəˈləd͡ʒ.ən/
religion noun: belief in a spiritual or metaphysical reality (often including at least one deity), accompanied by practices or rituals pertaining to the belief.
Noun
religion (countable and uncountable, plural religions)
- Belief in a spiritual or metaphysical reality (often including at least one deity), accompanied by practices or rituals pertaining to the belief.
- Holonyms: cosmology, ontology, epistemology, philosophy
- My brother tends to value religion, but my sister not as much.
- A particular system of such belief, and the rituals and practices proper to it.
- Holonyms: cosmology, ontology, epistemology, philosophy
- Near-synonyms: credo, creed
- The way of life committed to by monks and nuns.
- The monk entered religion when he was 20 years of age.
- Rituals and actions associated with religious beliefs, but considered apart from them.
- I think some Christians would love Jesus more if they weren't so stuck in religion.
- Jack's spiritual, but he's not really into religion.
- Synonyms:
- superstition
- Any practice to which someone or some group is seriously devoted.
- At this point, Star Trek has really become a religion.
- 'Religion can't exist without mystery, especially science, the newest religion.'1985, Joan Morrison, Share House Blues, Boolarong Publications, page 97
- Faithfulness to a given principle; conscientiousness.
- Oh with what religion doe I respect and observe the same!1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 8, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
Verb
religion (third-person singular simple present religions, present participle religioning, simple past and past participle religioned)
- Engage in religious practice.
- On the scales below, circle the one ( + ) or (-) number which best represents your situation on both the belief and practice dimensions for each of the traditional and nontraditional forms of religioning.1978, Military Chaplains' Review, page 70
- A similar caution is made by Nye when he calls for a re-evaluation of the category of religion in relationship to theory and method, suggesting that this category: be reconstructed in terms of practice theory as religious practice or religioning.2013, Monica R. Miller, Religion and Hip Hop, →ISBN, page 74
- Indoctrinate into a specific religion.
- To men whose minds are thus religioned, tied back to gods that never advance, there can never be any such word as progress1890, John R. Kelso, Deity analyzed: In six lectures - Page 37
- “What do you do, Donnigan? Spend all yer time religioning yer young?”2007, Janette Oke, A Bride for Donnigan, →ISBN, page 225
- To make sacred or symbolic; sanctify.
- The discussion of diet and health raises the question of the importance of discussing vegetarianism in relation to the contemporary religioning of health; as Ross remarks, 'health has replaced sexuality as the new privileged discourse of bodily truth and inner essence'.1994, Timothy Morton, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste, →ISBN, page 238
- The ideas expressed above challenge us to continuously rupture and interrupt racialized, classed, gendered, religioned and sexualized norms that inhere between and within institutions, understandings of bodies and our Selves.2011, Andrew O'Shea, Pedagogy, Oppression and Transformation in a 'Post-Critical' Climate, p 116
religion meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
religion in Hindi
- system of beliefs dealing with soul, deity and/or life after death
- धर्म dharm, दीन dīn, मज़हब mazhab
religion in Tamil
- system of beliefs dealing with soul, deity and/or life after death
- சமயம் camayam, மதம் matam
religion in Marathi
- system of beliefs dealing with soul, deity and/or life after death
- धर्म dharma
religion in Urdu
- system of beliefs dealing with soul, deity and/or life after death
- دِین dīn, مَذْہَب mazhab, دَھرْم dharm
More languagesFewer languages
- religion in Bengali
- ধর্ম dhormo, দ্বীন din
- religion in Telugu
- మతము matamu
- religion in Malayalam
- മതം mataṁ
- religion in Kannada
- ಧರ್ಮ dharma
- religion in Punjabi
- ਧਰਮ dharam
- religion in Gujarati
- ધર્મ dharma
- religion in Odia
- ଧର୍ମ dharma
- religion in Sanskrit
- धर्म dharma
- religion in Sinhala
- ආගම āgama
- religion in Assamese
- ধৰ্ম dhormo
- religion in Nepali
- धर्म dharma
- religion in Pashto
- مذهب mazhab, دين din
- religion in Tagalog
- relihiyon
- religion in Arabic
- دِين dīn
- religion in Malay
- agama, kepercayaan, anutan, din
- religion in Indonesian
- agama, din
- religion in Thai
- ศาสนา sàat-sà-nǎa
- religion in Vietnamese
- đạo, tôn giáo
- religion in Myanmar
- အယူဝါဒ a.yuwada., ဘာသာ bhasa, ဘာသာတရား bhasata.ra:
- Sindhi
- مذهب mẕb
- Dhivehi
- ދީން dīn̊
- Kashmiri
- مَزہَب mazhab
Examples of religion in a sentence
- Islam is a major religion, particularly in North Africa and Southwest Asia.
- Mormonism is a new religion, while Zoroastrianism is an old one.
- Most books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise definition of what its essence consists of. […] I shall not be pedantic enough to enumerate any of them to you now.1902, William James, “Lecture 2”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans...
- Phallicism was, therefore, at the root of all religion, and was definitely the opponent of evil and darkness.1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 160:
- The more one knows of one’s religion the less one believes—no one living knows more of mine than I.”1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 184:
- Religious practice and action (“religioning”) can be liberating, and can connect displaced people with the spirits of home.2015, Alexander Horstmann, Jin-Heon Jung, Building Noah’s Ark for Migrants, Refugees, and Religious Communities, →ISBN, page 13:
Synonyms of religion
Antonyms
Forms of religion
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | religions |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | religions |
| present participle | religioning |
| past participle | religioned |
| past | religioned |
Origin of religion
From Middle English religioun, from Old French religion, from Latin religiō (“scrupulousness, pious misgivings, superstition, conscientiousness, sanctity, an object of veneration, cult-observance, reverence”). Most likely from the Proto-Indo-European *h₂leg- with the meanings preserved in Latin dīligere and legere (“to read repeatedly”, “to have something solely in mind”). Displaced Old English ǣfæstnes (“religion, lawfulness”).
Words formed from religion
- American civil religion
- antireligion
- conreligion
- counterreligion
- find religion
- freedom of religion
- get religion
- irreligious
- lip religion
- misreligion
- natural religion
- neo-religion
- nonreligion
- overreligion
- parareligion
- protoreligion
- pseudoreligion
- religicide
- religiofascist
- religofascist
- religionary
- religionism
- religionist
- religionistic
- religionization
- religionize
- religionless
- religionlike
- religion of peace
- religion of piss
- religionwise
- religiose
- religious
- religism
- religist
- religitard
- religtard
- secular religion
- self religion
- self-religion
- subreligion
- unreligion
- urreligion
- war of religion
Phrases with religion
Words that rhyme with religion
Questions about religion
- What does religion mean?
- Religion means belief in a spiritual or metaphysical reality (often including at least one deity), accompanied by practices or rituals pertaining to the belief.
- What is religion in Hindi?
- Religion in Hindi is धर्म (dharm), दीन (dīn), मज़हब (mazhab). See Religion meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use religion in a sentence?
- Islam is a major religion, particularly in North Africa and Southwest Asia.
- What part of speech is religion?
- Religion can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce religion?
- Religion is pronounced /ɹɪˈlɪd͡ʒ.ən/ (UK).
- What is the plural of religion?
- The plural of religion is religions.
Words near religion in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: religion (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: En-uk-religion.ogg, en-us-religion.ogg.
Cite this entry: “religion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/religion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.