Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is totally different from the ordinary sense of the term myth, meaning a belief that is not true, as the veracity of a piece of folklore is entirely irrelevant to determining whether it constitutes a myth.[1]
Myths are often endorsed by religious and secular authorities, and may be natural or supernatural in character. Many societies group their myths, legends, and history together, considering myths and legends to be factual accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its later form. Origin myths explain how a society's customs, institutions, and taboos were established and sanctified. National myths are narratives about a nation's past that symbolize the nation's values. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and the enactment of rituals.
The word myth comes from Ancient Greek Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: μῦθος,[2] meaning 'speech', 'narrative', or 'fiction'. In turn, Ancient Greek Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: μυθολογία ('story', 'legends', or 'story-telling') combines the word with the suffix Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: -λογία ('study'). Accordingly, Plato used as a general term for fiction or story-telling of any kind. This word was adapted into other European languages in the early 19th century, in a much narrower sense, as a scholarly term for "[a] traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events."
The Greek term was then borrowed into Late Latin, occurring in the title of Latin author Fabius Planciades Fulgentius' 5th-century Mythologiæ to denote what is now referred to as classical mythology—i.e., Greco-Roman etiological stories involving their gods. Fulgentius's Mythologiæ explicitly treated its subject matter as allegories requiring interpretation and not as true events.[3] The Latin term was then adopted in Middle French as French, Middle (ca.1400-1600);: mythologie. Whether from French or Latin usage, English adopted the word mythology in the 15th century, initially meaning 'the exposition of a myth or myths', 'the interpretation of fables', or 'a book of such expositions'. The word is first attested in John Lydgate's Troy Book .[4] [5]
From Lydgate until the 17th or 18th century, mythology meant a moral, fable, allegory or a parable, or collection of traditional stories, understood to be false. It came eventually to be applied to similar bodies of traditional stories among other polytheistic cultures around the world. Thus mythology entered the English language before myth. Johnson's Dictionary, for example, has an entry for mythology, but not for myth. Indeed, the Greek loanword mythos
