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heaven

Pronunciation: /ˈhɛvən/

The English word “heaven” has 16 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The distant sky in which the sun, moon, and stars appear or move; the firmament; the celestial spheres.
  2. The near sky in which weather, flying animals, etc. appear; (obsolete) the atmosphere; the climate.
  3. A model displaying the movement of the celestial bodies, an orrery.
  4. The abode of God and of the angels and saints in His presence.
  5. The abode of the Abrahamic God; similar abodes of the gods in other religions and traditions, such as Mount Olympus.
  6. Providence, the will of God or the council of the gods; fate.
  7. The afterlife of the blessed dead, traditionally conceived as opposed to an afterlife of the wicked and unjust (compare hell); specifically
  8. Paradise, the afterlife of the souls who are not sent to a place of punishment or purification such as hell, purgatory, or limbo; the state or condition of being in the presence of God after death.
  9. The afterlife of the blessed dead in other religions and traditions, such as the Pure Land or Elysium.
  10. Any paradise; any blissful place or experience.
  11. A state of bliss; a peaceful ecstasy.
  12. Similarly blissful afterlives, places, or states for particular people, animals, or objects.

verb

  1. To transport to the abode of God, the gods, or the blessed.
  2. To beatify, enchant, or please greatly.
  3. To beautify, to make into a paradise.

adjective

  1. Being heavenly.

Etymology

From a wide variety of Middle English forms including hevene, heven, hevin, and hewin (“heaven, sky”), from Old English heofon, heofone (“heaven, sky”), from Proto-West Germanic *hebn (“heaven, sky”), of uncertain origin. Cognate with Scots heiven, hewin (“heaven, sky”), Middle Dutch heven (“sky, heaven”), Low German Heven (“heaven, sky”), and possibly the rare Icelandic and Old Norse hifinn…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.