Other forms: mythologies
A mythology is the whole body of a people's old sacred stories. Greek mythology, Norse mythology, a figure from mythology.
It is the collection rather than a single tale, and it includes the gods, the creation stories and the heroes. The word also means a set of widely believed but untrue ideas: the mythology around the founding of the company. Note mythological, mythical and mythic, which shade from belonging to myth, through untrue, to grand in the manner of myth — three useful gradations worth keeping apart.
1nounmythologyThe whole body of a people's old sacred stories.
“Norse mythology has about as many gods as anybody can remember.”
2nounsetA set of widely believed but untrue ideas.
“There is a whole mythology about how the company started.”
mythology is a body of stories.
Greek mythologia is mythos, a story, plus logia, a telling or study. Mythos meant simply a spoken account and had none of the modern implication of falsehood, which English added.
Latin
mȳthologia
Middle French
mythologie
English, today
mythology
Built from
From Middle English -, from Middle French mythologie, from Latin mȳthologia. First attested as Middle English - in 1412. From Middle French mythologie, from Latin mȳthologia, from Ancient Greek μυθολογία (“legend”) μυθολογέω (“to tell tales”), from μυθολόγος (“legend”), from μῦθος + λέγω. by surface analysis, myth + -ology or mytho- + -logy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA