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Glite Dictionary
🌍 A non-believer 🌍 Not religious
heathen

heathen

38 8.7
A person who does not follow religions like Christianity, Judaism, or Islam
  • noun
  • /ˈhiːðən/
  • Offensive
translation icon : hereje
  • We're not heathens.
  • pagans and heathens
  • Christian or heathen
  • mission to the heathen

I was just reading Clement of Alexandria's Exhortation to the Heathen last week.

Examples

  • They're heathens, the both of them.

    Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)

  • The missionaries traveled far to convert the heathens living in the remote villages.

  • You some kind of heathen now?

    He Got Game (1998)

  • What a lot of heathen you are!

    The Divorcee (1930)

  • An old heathen like me?

    Sabotage (1996)

  • - So here we are, Muslims, Christians and the odd heathen.

    Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2012)

  • Wicked men who live under the gospel are children of darkness as well as the heathen.

    Academic text (2003)

  • But the church in the West has spied out the heathen and envied their lives.

    Blog text (16)

  • I'm a heathen.

    Sparkle (2012)

  • My father's lifework was to save the heathen from the fires of damnation.

    Fiction book (1998)

Synonyms

pagan
vsheathen
29 6.7

A person who follows an older religion with many gods, not Christianity, Judaism, or Islam

refers more broadly to anyone outside major faiths not only polytheists

Antonyms

believer
343 3.2

A person who accepts something as true and often supports it, for example a religion or idea

Surface Forms

heathen singular
heathens plural

Morphology

heathen = heath (opaque) = heath + en

Although the form corresponds to 'heath' + '-en', an average learner cannot derive the meaning 'non‑Christian/pagan' from 'heath'; the sense has become lexicalized and unrelated to the land sense for learners.

Etymology

Heathen comes from an old English word hæðen that is linked to heath, meaning 'open land'. People who lived on the heath were often seen as outside the town and the church, so heathen came to mean someone 'not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim'.