Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A circular temple in Rome, completed in 27 B.C. and dedicated to all the gods.
- n. A temple dedicated to all gods.
- n. All the gods of a people considered as a group: Jupiter is head of the Roman pantheon.
- n. A public building commemorating and dedicated to the heroes and heroines of a nation.
- n. A group of persons most highly regarded for contributions to a field or endeavor: the pantheon of modern physics.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A temple or shrine dedicated to all the gods. The name is specifically applied to a magnificent building erected at Rome by Agrippa, about 25 b.c., in connection with public baths, and dedicated by himself as a temple of all the gods, because of its beauty. For nearly thirteen centuries it has served as a Christian church. having been dedicated about 607 by Boniface IV. to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. It is now known as Santa Maria della Rotonda, from its circular plan. Its external diameter is 188 feet, and it is covered by a hemispherical dome 142 feet 6 inches in span. the entire height being about 141 feet. It is lighted by a circular orifice, 26 feet in diameter, at the summit of the dome. It has in front a noble octastyle portico of Corinthian columns. 103 feet wide. See cut in next column, and cut under octastyle.
- n. All the divinities, collectively, worshiped by a people: as, one of the divinities of the Greek pantheon.
- n. [capitalized] A work treating of the whole body of divinities of a people: as, Tooke's “Pantheon.”
- n. [capitalized] A memorial structure in honor of the great men of a people, or filling some such purpose; especially, such a building serving as a mausoleum, as the Pantheon (church of Ste. Geneviève) in Paris. Westminster Abbey is often called the Panthcon of the British.
Wiktionary
- n. a temple dedicated to all the gods
- n. all the gods of a particular people or religion, particularly the ancient Greek gods residing on Olympus, considered as a group
- n. a category or classification denoting the most honored persons of a group
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A temple dedicated to all the gods; especially, the building so called at Rome.
- n. The collective gods of a people, or a work treating of them.
WordNet 3.0
- n. all the gods of a religion
- n. (antiquity) a temple to all the gods
- n. a monument commemorating a nation's dead heroes
Etymologies
- Middle English Panteon, Pantheon, from Latin Panthēum, Panthēon, from Greek Pantheion, shrine of all the gods, from neuter sing. of pantheios, of all the gods : pan-, pan- + theos, god; see dhēs- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“I wasn't expecting an upset, but back in my undergrad days, I would have guessed at least a 70-30 split — the pantheon is a harsh mistress.”
“Conversely, the other advantage to a pantheon is that it bestows distance when you are going into God territory.”
“If your pantheon is more complex, say you have two competing factions of deities, laid over an older, animist pattern, that tells you a lot about the social evolution of the society: maybe not-Buddhism came along and supplanted not-Shinto.”
“Protests over plan to bury President in Polish pantheon”
“Enterprise Conent Management still has a place in the acronym pantheon, but that place is an increasingly limited one ...”
“Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where your pantheon is our pantheon!”
“Among the Hatti proper -- that is, the broad-headed military aristocracy -- the chief deity of the pantheon was the Great Father, the creator, "the lord of Heaven", the Baal.”
“The hymn may be older than Hammurabi, who, perhaps, is quoting or copying it, and since the Bel who is here at the head of the pantheon is the god of Nippur, the hymn may originally have belonged to the ritual of that place.”
“But for the theologians of Babylon, the position of Marduk as the head of the pantheon was a much more important factor.”
“Natural and indeed inevitable as this conclusion was, the scientific theory in the Euphrates Valley was presumably influenced to some extent by the circumstance that the head of the pantheon was a solar deity.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pantheon’.
brtom She reigns
in eventual pantheons
of book store cahiers ...
Raymond Farr, in As/Is Dec 21, 2006