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What is the difference between myth and mythology?

myth | mythology |

Mythology is a related term of myth.



In uncountable terms the difference between myth and mythology

is that myth is such stories as a genre while mythology is the systematic collection and study of myths.

As nouns the difference between myth and mythology

is that myth is a traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a sacred narrative regarding a god, a hero, the origin of the world or of a people, etc while mythology is the collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.

myth

English

Alternative forms

* mythe (rare or archaic)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a sacred narrative regarding a god, a hero, the origin of the world or of a people, etc.
  • (uncountable) Such stories as a genre.
  • Myth was the product of man's emotion and imagination, acted upon by his surroundings.'' (E. Clodd, ''Myths & Dreams (1885), 7, cited after OED)
  • A commonly-held but false belief, a common misconception; a fictitious or imaginary person or thing; a popular conception about a real person or event which exaggerates or idealizes reality.
  • A person or thing held in excessive or quasi-religious awe or admiration based on popular legend
  • Father Flanagan was legendary, his institution an American myth. (Tucson (Arizona) Citizen, 20 September 1979, 5A/3, cited after OED)
  • A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable.
  • * Ld. Lytton
  • As for Mrs. Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years.

    See also

    * legend

    mythology

    Noun

  • The collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.}}
  • (countable, and, uncountable) A similar body of myths concerning an event, person or institution.
  • * 2003 , Peter Utgaard, Remembering & Forgetting Nazism: Education, National Identity, and the Victim Myth in Postwar Austria , Berghahn Books, ISBN 978-1-57181-187-5, page x:
  • This program to distinguish Austria from Germany was important to building a new Austria, but it also indirectly contributed to victim mythology by implying that participation in the Nazi war of conquest was antithetical to Austrian identity.
  • Pervasive elements of a fictional universe that resemble a mythological universe.
  • * 2000 April 28, Caryn James (?), As Scheherazade Was Saying . . .], in The New York Times'', page E31, reproduced in ''The New York Times Television Reviews 2000 , Routledge (2001), ISBN 978-1-57958-060-5, [http://books.google.com/books?id=z0QFKpI6p7AC&pg=PA198&dq=mythology page 198:
  • This tongue-in-cheek episode is especially fun for people who don’t take their “X-Files” mythology seriously.
  • (uncountable) The systematic collection and study of myths.
  • Synonyms

    *

    Derived terms

    * mythological * mythologist

    See also

    * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink)