deity

\ \ [14] Deity comes via Old French deite from late Latin deitās ‘godhood, divinity’, a derivative of Latin deus ‘god’. This traces its ancestry back to Indo-European *deiwos, which has links with other words meaning ‘sky’ and ‘day’ and probably comes ultimately from a base with the sense ‘bright, shining’. Amongst its other descendants are English divine, the personifications Greek Zeus, Latin Iuppiter and Iovis (source of English jovial), and Old English Tīw (source of English Tuesday), and Sanskrit dēvás ‘god’ (source of English deodar ‘variety of cedar’ [19], literally ‘divine wood’); the superficially similar Greek theós ‘god’, however, is not related. English is also indebted to Latin deus for deify [14] and, via a somewhat circuitous route, the joss [18] of joss-stick, a Pidgin English word which comes from deos, the Portuguese descendant of deus.

\ \ Cf.⇒ DIVINE, JOSS, JOVIAL, TUESDAY