godhead

Inherited from Middle English godhede, equivalent to god +‎ -head (“-hood”). First attested in the Ancrene Wisse (ca. 1225); compare godhood and Dutch godheid as well as German Gottheit.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɒd.hɛd/

godhead (countable and uncountable, plural godheads)

1. Divinity or godhood, divine essence or nature.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Romans 1:20:

     For the inuisible things of him from the Creation of the world, are clearely seene, being vnderstood by the things that are made, euen his eternall Power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse:

   • 1906 May–October, Jack London, chapter 1, in White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC, part 4 (The Superior Gods), page 195:

     It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, and it is on power that god-head rests.

2. (usually capitalized) God.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Colossians 2:9:

     For in him dwelleth all the fulneſſe of the Godhead bodily.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker ; nd by Robert Boulter ; nd Matthias Walker, , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC, lines 584–586:

     when at the holy mount / Of Heav'ns high-ſeated top, th' Impereal Throne / Of Godhead, fixed for ever firm and ſure,

   • 1788, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume V, London: W Strahan; and T Cadell, , →OCLC, page 129:

     They unanimously pronounced, that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church: but they hesitate whether that worship be relative or direct; whether the Godhead, and the figure of Christ, be entitled to the same mode of adoration.

   • 1807, William Wordsworth, “Ode to Duty”, in Poems, in Two Volumes, volume I, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, , →OCLC, page 73:

     Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear / The Godhead's most benignant grace; / Nor know we any thing so fair / As is the smile upon thy face;

3. (rare) Any deity or idol.
   • 1697, Virgil, “The Seventh Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. , London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC, page 405, lines 185–188:

     Adoring firſt the Genius of the Place, / Then Earth, the Mother of the Heav'nly Race, / The Nymphs, and native Godheads yet unknown, / And Night, and all the Stars that gild her ſable Throne,

4. (by extension) An admired or influential person or entity.
   • 2007 June, Gregory Mone, “Invention: A New Breed of Mouse”, in Popular Science‎, volume 270, number 6, archived from the original on 17 December 2011, page 56:

     He pauses, as if hesitant to mention the godhead of computer design aloud, and adds, "Maybe even something Apple would be interested in."

• godhood

• doghead