/ˈpɒlɪθiːɪzəm/
[noun] The belief in or worship of more than one god. Many ancient religions, such as those of the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, were based on polytheism.
The word 'polytheism' was actually coined not by a pagan, but by a Jewish philosopher trying to explain what his people were not.
The story of 'polytheism' begins in ancient Greek, where two simple but powerful words were waiting to be joined together. The first is 'polys', meaning 'many', a root that was everywhere in Greek thought and language. The second is 'theos', meaning 'god', a word that sat at the very centre of Greek religious life. Together, they described something so common in the ancient world that the Greeks themselves barely needed a single term for it — worshipping many gods was simply what everyone did.
The word as we know it, however, did not emerge from ancient Athens. It was coined in the 17th century by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria — or, more precisely, it was the French scholar Jean Bodin who used the term 'polythéisme' in the 1580s, drawing directly on Greek roots to name a concept he wanted to contrast with monotheism. The irony is striking: a word invented to describe the dominant religious practice of the ancient world was actually created by thinkers standing firmly outside that tradition, looking in and giving it a label.
The Greek root 'polys' has given English a remarkable family of words. It travelled through Latin 'poly-' into English 'polygon' (many sides), 'polyglot' (many languages), 'polynomial' (many terms), and 'polyphony' (many sounds). Each one carries that same Greek idea of multiplicity and abundance. The root 'theos', meanwhile, gave us 'theology' (the study of god), 'theocracy' (government by god or priests), 'atheism' (the belief that no gods exist, from Greek 'a-' meaning without), and 'monotheism' (the belief in only one god, from Greek 'monos' meaning alone or single).
English borrowed 'polytheism' in the early 17th century, directly from French 'polythéisme', which itself was built from the ancient Greek components. The word arrived at a time when European scholars were trying to categorise the bewildering variety of the world's religions — many of which, encountered through trade and exploration, involved multiple divine beings. Having a clean, scholarly label was useful. By the mid-1600s, 'polytheist' (a person who holds this belief) and 'polytheistic' (the adjective form) had also entered English, completing the family.
What makes the history of this word quietly fascinating is the way it reverses the usual flow of naming. Normally, a word is invented by the people who practise or experience something. But the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Hindus who worshipped many gods never called their own practice 'polytheism'. They simply called it religion, or piety, or devotion. The word was created from the outside, by monotheists and scholars who needed a term to set one type of belief apart from another. In this way, 'polytheism' is less a description of an ancient feeling and more a product of the modern urge to classify and compare — a label born not in a temple, but in a library.