cult
/kʌlt/ noun, adjective
Forms cults
- noun (religion) The veneration, devotion, and religious rites given to a deity (especially in a historical polytheistic context), or (in a Christian context) to a saint; a subset of worship. “imperial cult”
- noun (informal) A group of people having an obsession with or intense admiration for a particular activity, idea, person or thing. “the heavy metal cult”
- noun (chiefly derogatory) A group, sect or movement following an unorthodox religious or philosophical system of beliefs, especially one in which members remove and exclude themselves from greater society, including family members not part of the cult, and show extreme devotion to a charismatic leader. “Two former cult members explain the difficulties they had extricating themselves from it.”
- adjective Of or relating to a cult.
- adjective Enjoyed by a small, loyal group. “a cult horror movie”
Synonyms
Etymology
Derived from French culte, from Latin cultus (“care, adoration; cult”), from colō (“cultivate; protect”).
Webster’s 1913
Etymology [F. culte, L. cultus care, culture, fr. colere to cultivate. Cf. Cultus.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “cult”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details