numinous

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English[edit]

WOTD – 28 July 2018

Etymology[edit]

From Latin nūmen (“nod of the head; divine sway or will; divinity”) +‎ -ous (“suffix forming adjectives from nouns, denoting possession or presence of a quality”). Nūmen is believed to derive either from Latin *nuō (“to nod”) or from Ancient Greek νοούμενον (nooúmenon, “influence perceptible by the mind but not the senses”) (ultimately from νόος (nóos, “mind; thought; purpose”)).

Pronunciation[edit]

Adjective[edit]

numinous (comparative more numinous, superlative most numinous)

  1. Of or relating to a numen (divinity); indicating the presence of a divinity. [from mid 17th c.]
    His interest in numinous objects led him on a quest for the Holy Grail.
    • 1972, Burr Cartwright Brundage, “The Mexica Gain a King”, in A Rain of Darts: The Mexica Aztecs (Texas Pan American Series), Austin, Tx., London: University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 23:
      The fetish of Huitzilopochtli, bundled up and screened from profane eyes, now preceded the wandering group, carried on the back of his oracle-priest or sorcerer who alone was holy enough to handle safely the numinous object.
    • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 40:
      He held his own body in numinous esteem.
    • 1981, C. Bennett Pascal, “October Horse”, in D[avid] R[oy] Shackleton Bailey, editor, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, volume 85, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 278:
      The use of blood to instill numen into a thing is illustrated by the establishment and annual renewal of Terminus, the boundary marker […] The transfer of numinous power to persons has its example in the drinking of blood by seers in order to get oracular vision.
  2. Evoking a sense of the mystical, sublime, or transcendent; awe-inspiring.
    • 1647, Theodore de la Guard [pseudonym; Nathaniel Ward], The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America. […], London: […] J[ohn] D[ever] & R[obert] I[bbitson] for Stephen Bowtell, […], →OCLC; The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America (Force’s Collection of Historical Tracts; vol. III, no. 8), 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: […] Daniel Henchman, […]; [Washington, D.C.: W. Q. Force], 1713 (1844 printing), →OCLC, page 44:
      The Will of a King is very numinous; it hath a kind of vast universality in it, it is many times greater than the will of his whole Kingdom, stiffened with ill Counsel and ill Presidents: […]
    • 1966, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 6, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York: Bantam Books, published 1976, →ISBN, page 136:
      Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth. In the songs Miles, Dean, Serge and Leonard sang was either some fraction of the truth's numinous beauty (as Mucho now believed) or only a power spectrum.
    • 1971, Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad (Library of European civilization), London: Thames and Hudson, →ISBN, page 154:
      [Justinian I] had the genius to realize the vast resources available to an east Roman emperor of the early sixth century — an almost numinous past history, a full treasury, an unrivalled supply of human talent in every field.
    • 1996, Anne Bernays, “Introduction”, in Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Merry Tales, New York, N.Y., Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page xxxix:
      Is death closer than they think? [Samuel Langhorne] Clemens sets the scene with a numinous description of the men waiting in the corncrib in the "veiled moonlight."
    • 2022, China Miéville, chapter 4, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC:
      A post-scarcity communism that doesn't dispense with all thoughts of the divine and numinous can't be precluded.

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