Definition

“Deify” means to worship, exalt, or regard someone or something as a god or divine being.

Pronunciation

US English

UK English


See Synonyms, Antonyms and Usage

Excerpts from News Articles

No matter how hard the U.S. tries to glorify and deify itself, piracy is written in its genes.

Logo 2023-03-31 CGTN

Crucifixion was a form of execution reserved for non-elite members of society. Despite the nature of his death, Jesus’ followers claimed he was God and the only one deserving of worship. In doing so, they rejected all the other deities in the surrounding polytheistic culture. It was profoundly counter-cultural for its time.

Logo 2023-04-06 The Conversation

Paul said he could. Just. If the deities of driving cleared a path.

Logo 2023-04-07 The Register

“Every day the religion grows a little more,” Mandy Arrazcaeta, 30, said among the throngs of people in his home dancing and making offerings at the altar to a plastic doll depicting the Yoruba deity Yemayá. “Right now, Santería in the country is a sort of bastion.”

Logo 2023-04-09 Associated Press

Bollywood memorabilia and traditional woven fabrics share the spotlight with ancient bronzes and carved deities . MAP's founder, the businessman and philanthropist Abhishek Poddar, said the collection puts "everything on one level playing field."

Logo 2023-04-09 CNN News

The South African film-maker Gcobisa Yako reimagined MaMlambo, the avenging goddess of rivers in Zulu mythology, as a deity that watches over women with troubled lives who have tried to take their own lives in the river.

Logo 2023-04-10 The Guardian

“In the Arabian Peninsula, there were many deities that had reverence for pre-Islamic Arabs, and often these deities were associated with natural occurrences and phenomena,” she explained. “This clues us into the attunement to nature that people practised, … but there are little to no accessible records of that time in terms of what rituals were held and so on.

Logo 2023-04-10 Al Jazeera

“[People] were sacrificing them to these deities , which were really demons,” she said.

Logo 2023-04-11 CNN News

When he managed to recover, inspired by this experience, he composed one of the most beautiful movements of his entire collection of works: the third movement of his String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, which he called Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an der Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart, translated as “Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity , in the Lydian Mode”.

Logo 2023-04-12 The Conversation

The deification of ‘the most English of all English architects’ reached a peak with the bicentenary of 1923. The commemoration service at St Paul’s was a grand affair, attended by the Bishop of London, the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs and a bevy of establishment figures.

Logo 2023-04-12 The Spectator

Thus begins a cross-country adventure to seal more magical Pandora’s boxes, which each have the potential to trigger further natural disasters, and track down the trickster feline deity in order to de-morph our story’s main love interest.

Logo 2023-04-14 EURO News

Asked if he had got what he wanted from his four-day trip where he was welcomed like a deity , he said there was “more to be done” in Northern Ireland.

Logo 2023-04-15 The Guardian

‘God of love, we raise to you our Queen Consort”: for anyone who has longed to mention Camilla Parker Bowles to the most high but struggled to find the words, the Church of England is here, with a set of new prayers, to help. Will they work? Given the impressive pace of her ascent from dedicated fox-chaser to – after years of regular Anglican invocations – near deity , it seems almost blasphemous to ask.

Logo 2023-04-16 The Guardian

Traditional textiles blend symbols of the everyday, like rainstorms, birds and beetles, with those linked to the afterlife, like mangoes, elephants and ancestor deities .

Logo 2023-04-17 MSNBC News

Among the treasures on display for the first time are a trader’s weight in the shape of Harpocrates, the god of silence – the only one of its kind in Britain – and statuettes of Roman deities that would have been presented as gifts in shrines.

Logo 2023-04-18 The Guardian

Mithridates made political use of his Persian heritage, just as Cleopatra made use of her Egyptian heritage, with one difference: Cleopatra’s Egyptian ancestry was actually non-existent. Nonetheless she appeared on carvings as an Egyptian Pharaoh making oblations to the ancient Egyptian gods, though conveniently there was also an invented god in Ptolemaic Egypt called Serapis who was a fusion of a Greek and Egyptian deity .

Logo 2023-04-18 The Spectator

For Das, a broad-shouldered man with a stout frame, Ayodhya is the birthplace of Ram, Hinduism’s most revered deity . The city also hosts one of Hinduism’s most sacred sites – Ram’s grand temple – which will open to pilgrims next year. It is imperative that the city clings to its Hindu character, Das says.

Logo 2023-04-19 Al Jazeera

Centered on a deified midwife, Hu Xuewen's unique story paints a picture of pastoral problems, proclivities and perseverance, Yang Yang reports.

Logo 2023-04-21 China Daily

But a new marketing campaign by Italy’s tourism ministry has turned the ancient deity into a “virtual influencer”—with the help of artificial intelligence technology.

Logo 2023-04-21 CNN News

Far be it from The Reg to suggest the two things were linked but Musk – seen by some a deity sent down to save humanity and others as a genius asshole – might be playing with forces that, for once, are well out of his control.

Logo 2023-04-21 The Register

In the 3rd century, the Roman Empire, which at the time had not adopted Christianity, celebrated the rebirth of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus) on December 25th. This holiday not only marked the return of longer days after the winter solstice but also followed the popular Roman festival called the Saturnalia (during which people feasted and exchanged gifts). It was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, a god of light and loyalty whose cult was at the time growing popular among Roman soldiers.


Take a look around the Tate Modern. There you can find the International Surrealists, roughly contemporary to Jung, with their nightmarish, disembodied parts, monstrously tacked together, clawing as they try to excavate the subconscious. They have Yamashita Kikuki’s Deification of a Soldier (1967) and Yves Tanguy’s 1951 painting The Invisibles, of ‘biomorphic beings set in strange landscapes’ that are ‘partly mechanical, partly organic’.

Logo 2023-04-23 The Spectator

He became acquainted with the fables of Mazu, a 15th-century deity from the Fujian province, from where the cockle pickers had also travelled. He and his researchers were able to find prints – “in the British Museum’s colonial archive, of all places” – of The Tale of Meizhou Island, a fable in which Mazu loses her power and is no longer able to save sailors from danger at sea, but brings them to Meizhou, the island of safety.

Logo 2023-04-24 The Guardian

The ancient Egyptians – great cultivators of lettuce – saw it as sacred, though for different reasons. In Egyptian mythology, Min, one of the earliest known Egyptian deities of rain, fertility, crops and male potency, and often represented by an ithyphallic figure, was often associated with lettuce. But it was not the butterhead from which I am going to make my bed, but rather a tall variety with a “straight vertical surge of growth and milky juice”, as Jane Grigson describes it.

Logo 2023-04-24 The Guardian

It’s often said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first turn mad, which may or may not apply to the Scottish National Party. But the deities always find it easier to punish hubris when those guilty of it turn themselves into figures of fun. And, when it comes to that, Humza Yousaf is your man.

Logo 2023-04-25 The Spectator

This season sees Beavis and Butt-Head dunk on Lil Nas X, Audrey Nuna, Bill Gates, Ronald Reagan and even the Buddha. There’s a bizarre scene in which the boys annoy Jesus and Ganesh on an astral plane so much that the deities take turns punching the boys.

Logo 2023-04-26 Associated Press