CULT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Cult

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/kəlt/ Listen

noun

Cult n.

Attentive care; homage; worship. "Every one is convinced of the reality of a better self, and of the cult or homage which is due to it."

A system of religious belief and worship. "That which was the religion of Moses is the ceremonial or cult of the religion of Christ."

A system of intense religious veneration of a particular person, idea, or object, especially one considered spurious or irrational by traditional religious bodies; as, the Moonie cult.

The group of individuals who adhere to a cult (senses 2 or 3).

A strong devotion or interest in a particular person, idea or thing without religious associations, or the people holding such an interest; as, the cult of James Dean; the cult of personality in totalitarian societies.

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Etymology of 'Cult'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cult" Quotes from Famous Books

... The cult of courage imposed on and exercised by the ruling classes, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effective shape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far as positive values go, the ethics of ...

— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... between the Being of Nature (cf. Kant's "starry vault above") and the God of the heart (Kant's "moral law within"). The idea of an antagonism seems to have been cardinal in the thought of the Essenes and the Orphic cult and in the Persian dualism. So, too, Buddhism seems to be "antagonistic." On the other hand, the Moslem teaching and modern Judaism seem absolutely to combine and identify the two; God the creator is altogether and without distinction also ...

— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... has very little of the narrow and acrid temper of the special pleader. He is content to show humanity. It is quite conceivable that the future, forgetful of the special social problems and the humanitarian cult of to-day, may view these plays as simply bodying forth the passions and events that are timeless and constant in the inevitable march of human life. The tragedies of Drayman Henschel and of Rose Bernd, at all events, stand in ...

— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... whose bold lead they profess to follow, lies at rest in the Jewish cemetery of his native Breslau under the simple epitaph "Thinker and Fighter," and at his death the extraordinary popular manifestations seemed to inaugurate the cult of a modern ...

— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... no fanatical zeal, and have no creed or cult of my own to vindicate. I am influenced only by a noble love of truth and a sublime sense of duty in arraying myself with the despised minority,—perhaps I may say by a sense of fair play for the "under dog." I do ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

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