mystagogue

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word mystagogue. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word mystagogue, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say mystagogue in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word mystagogue you have here. The definition of the word mystagogue will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofmystagogue, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Latin mystagōgus, Ancient Greek μυσταγωγός (mustagōgós). By surface analysis, mystic +‎ -agogue.

Noun

mystagogue (plural mystagogues)

  1. A person who prepares an initiate for entry into a mystery cult, or who teaches mystical doctrines.
    Synonym: hierophant
    • 1820, [Walter Scott], The Abbot. , volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, ; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, , →OCLC:
      There is an overruling destiny above us, though not in the sense in which it was viewed by that wretched man, who, beguiled by some foreign mystagogue, used the awful word as the ready apology for whatever he chose to do—we must examine the packet.
    • 1838, Robert Sandeman, Letters on Theron and Aspasio: Addressed to the Author, page 162:
      Philosophers themselves, the mystagogues in the temple of decorum, must approach it with reverence, and after all are allowed only to turn it aside a very little.
    • 1874, Charles Kingsley, Health and Education‎:
      It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and if you will be brave, honest, patient, and rational, you will need no mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and what not to believe; for you will be just as good judges of scientific facts and theories as those who assume the right of guiding your convictions.
    • 1878, John Addington Symonds, Percy Bysshe Shelley‎:
      Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes.
  2. One who keeps and shows church relics.

Translations

Further reading

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “mystagogue”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

French

Noun

mystagogue m or f by sense (plural mystagogues)

  1. mystagogue

Further reading

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia