ungod

present singular third person ungods · participle present ungodding · participle past ungodded · past ungodded

1. transitiveTo divest of a god.

   Near-synonyms: atheize, agnosticize, secularize

   1 more example

   Thus men ungodded may to places rise, / And sects may be preferr'd without disguise: / No danger to the church or state from these; / The Papist only has his writ of ease.

   1687, John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther

   Synonyms: atheize, agnosticize, secularize

2. transitiveTo divest of godly powers; to strip of divinity.

   Perhaps Saladin's "ungodding" of his father is a necessary first step for the male child's emancipation...

   2008, Matt Kimmich, Offspring Fictions: Salman Rushdie's Family Novels

   1 more example

   He that would have another god, would have the Lord to be ungodded, and to lose his sovereign power and goodness!

   1830, Richard Baxter, The Practical Works of Richard Baxter

   Synonyms: disdeify, undeify, euhemerize · Antonyms: deify, divinize, apotheosize, euhemerize, redeify, demideify, mythologize

plural ungods

1. A false god; an idol

   They provoked Me with an ungod, they vexed Me with their empty things.

   2008, Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses

   3 more examples

   [...] it isn't that Godhead “isn't God,” it's that Godhead is a non-God, an “Ungod” (in the same sense as we talk of the “undead” who are neither living or dead, but the living dead).

   2011, Slavoj Žižek, John Milbank, Creston Davis, The Monstrosity of Christ

   The god of cult is an ungod, because the god of cult represents a god molded in the image of the worshippers and created to satisfy their innate ambitions and it is likewise with the god of dogma, which is a reified form of idolatry.

   2015, M.P. Joseph, Theologies of the Non-Person

   He had not blinked, Curjai noted, not once in many minutes. Perhaps not since he had come to out there in the snow. 'When you – recovered, what did you think had happened to you?' 'I know what happened. One of your local gler ungods struck me, turned me to ice. Death. I didn't want to go. It was wrong.'

   2016, Tanith Lee, No Flame But Mine