English

Alternative forms

• mythe (rare or archaic)

Noun

myth ‎(plural myths)

1. A traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a sacred narrative regarding a god, a hero, the origin of the world or of a people, etc.
2. (uncountable) Such stories as a genre.

   Myth was the product of man's emotion and imagination, acted upon by his surroundings. (E. Clodd, Myths & Dreams (1885), 7, cited after OED)

3. A commonly-held but false belief, a common misconception; a fictitious or imaginary person or thing; a popular conception about a real person or event which exaggerates or idealizes reality.
4. A person or thing held in excessive or quasi-religious awe or admiration based on popular legend

   Father Flanagan was legendary, his institution an American myth. (Tucson (Arizona) Citizen, 20 September 1979, 5A/3, cited after OED)

5. A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable.
   • Ld. Lytton

     As for Mrs. Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years.

Related terms

• mythic
• mythical
• mythicize
• mythify
• mythologem
• mythological
• mythology
• mythopoeia
• mythopoeic
• mythopoesis
• mythos
• pseudomyth

Translations

See also

• legend

External links

• myth in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• myth in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Welsh

Noun

myth

1. Nasal mutation of byth.

Mutation