mystagogue
Americannoun
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someone who instructs others before initiation into religious mysteries or before participation in the sacraments.
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a person whose teachings are said to be founded on mystical revelations.
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of mystagogue
1540–50; < Latin mystagōgus < Greek mystagōgós, equivalent to mýst ( ēs ) ( see mystic) + ágōgos -agogue
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, who began life as a drawing teacher and is now chief mystagogue of National Socialism, spends much of his time in private sanatoria.
From Time Magazine Archive
The mystagogue is but too closely allied to the charlatan.
From Hours in a Library New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) by Sir Leslie Stephen
He had none of the airs of mystagogue, but talked to men, as he did to beasts, in the speech which was habitual to them.
From Rest Harrow A Comedy of Resolution by Maurice Henry Hewlett
But the mystagogue succeeds because he gets himself misunderstood; although, as a rule, he is not even worth misunderstanding.
From All Things Considered by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
The arch mystagogue, Home, though by no means a clever man, was never detected in fraudulent productions of fetishistic phenomena.
From The Making of Religion by Andrew Lang
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
