heathen: [OE] Etymologically, a heathen is ‘someone who lives on the heath’ – that is, someone who lives in a wild upcountry area, and is uncivilized and savage (the word was derived in prehistoric Germanic times from *khaithiz ‘heath’, and is also represented in German heide, Dutch heiden, and Swedish and Danish heden). Its specific use for ‘person who is not a Christian’ seems to have been directly inspired by Latin pāgānus (source of English pagan), which likewise originally meant ‘countrydweller’. (Etymologically, savages too were to begin with dwellers in ‘wild woodland’ areas, while civilized or urbane people lived in cities or towns.) The now archaic hoyden ‘high-spirited girl’ [16] was borrowed from Dutch heiden ‘heathen’. => heath, hoyden
heathen
Old English h?een "not Christian or Jewish," also as a noun, "heathen man, one of a race or nation which does not acknowledge the God of the Bible" (especially of the Danes), merged with Old Norse heieinn (adj.) "heathen, pagan," of uncertain origin. Cognate with Old Saxon hedhin, Old Frisian hethen, Dutch heiden, Old High German heidan, German Heiden.
Perhaps literally "dweller on the heath, one inhabiting uncultivated land;" see heath + -en (2). Historically assumed to be ultimately from Gothic haitno "gentile, heathen woman," used by Ulfilas in the first translation of the Bible into a Germanic language (as in Mark vii:26, for "Greek"); like other basic words for exclusively Christian ideas (such as church) it likely would have come first into Gothic and then spread to other Germanic languages. If so it could be a noun use of an unrelated Gothic adjective (compare Gothic haiti "dwelling on the heath," but a religious sense is not recorded for this). Whether native or Gothic, it may have been chosen on model of Latin paganus, with its root sense of "rural" (see pagan), or for resemblance to Greek ethne (see gentile), or it may be a literal borrowing of that Greek word, perhaps via Armenian hethanos [Sophus Bugge].
例文
1. He preached the Gospel to the heathen locals from this spot.
彼はここで不信教の地元の人に福音書を説いたことがある。
2.They first set out to convert the heathen .
彼らはまず異教徒を帰依させることに着手した。
3.Sometimes the rallying cry is 'save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen ！'
キリストの墓を異教徒から取り戻そう！
4.The heathen temple was torn down by a crowd of religions fanatics.
異教徒の神殿が宗教マニアの群れによって取り壊された。
5.She regarded Augustine as a very much of a heathen .