deist

• Deist
• deïst (rare)

From French déiste, from New Latin deista, from Latin Deus (“God”) + -ista (“-ist”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈdeɪ.ɪst/, /ˈdiː.ɪst/

• Audio (Midwestern US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːɪst
• Hyphenation: deist

deist (comparative more deist, superlative most deist)

1. (religion) Of or relating to deism and deists.

   Synonyms: deistic, deistical

   Antonyms: antideist; nondeist

   Coordinate terms: theist; atheist; see others at religious adherents

deist (plural deists)

1. (religion) A person who believes in deism.

   Antonyms: antideist; nondeist

   Hyponyms: pandeist, panendeist, polydeist

   Coordinate terms: theist; atheist; see others at religious adherents

   • 2018, Steven Pinker, “Chapter 1: Dare to Understand!; Chapter 2: Entro, Evo, Info”, in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Penguin, →ISBN:

     It was reason that led most of the Enlightenment thinkers to repudiate a belief in an anthropomorphic God who took an interest in human affairs.⁶ The application of reason revealed that reports of miracles were dubious, that the authors of holy books were all too human, that natural events unfolded with no regard to human welfare, and that different cultures believed in mutually incompatible deities, none of them less likely than the others to be products of the imagination. (As Montesquieu wrote, “If triangles had a god they would give him three sides.”) For all that, not all of the Enlightenment thinkers were atheists. Some were deists (as opposed to theists): they thought that God set the universe in motion and then stepped back, allowing it to unfold according to the laws of nature. Others were pantheists, who used “God” as a synonym for the laws of nature. But few appealed to the law-giving, miracle-conjuring, son-begetting God of scripture. […] Organisms are replete with improbable configurations of flesh like eyes, ears, hearts, and stomachs which cry out for an explanation. Before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided one in 1859, it was reasonable to think they were the handiwork of a divine designer—one of the reasons, I suspect, that so many Enlightenment thinkers were deists rather than outright atheists. Darwin and Wallace made the designer unnecessary. […] before the concepts of information and computation were elucidated, it was reasonable for someone to be a mind-body dualist and attribute mental life to an immaterial soul (just as before the concept of evolution was elucidated, it was reasonable to be a creationist and attribute design in nature to a cosmic designer). That’s another reason, I suspect, that so many Enlightenment thinkers were deists.

• deistic
• deistical
• deistically

• “deist”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “deist”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

• diest, diets, dites, diëts, edits, sited, stied, tides

Borrowed from French déiste.

deist m (plural deiști, feminine equivalent deistă)

1. deist

From Latin deus (“god”) +‎ -ist

deist c

1. a deist

• diets, diset

• IPA^(key): /deˈist/
• Hyphenation: de‧ist

deist (definite accusative deisti, plural deistler)

1. (religion) a deist