Definition of "religion" in English

noun

1. (uncountable) Belief in a spiritual or metaphysical reality (often including at least one deity), accompanied by practices or rituals pertaining to the belief.

   • Holonyms: cosmology, ontology, epistemology, philosophy
   • My brother tends to value religion, but my sister not as much.

2. (countable) A particular system of such belief, and the rituals and practices proper to it.

   • Holonyms: cosmology, ontology, epistemology, philosophy
   • Near-synonyms: credo, creed
   • Islam is a major religion, particularly in North Africa and Southwest Asia.
   • Mormonism is a new religion, while Zoroastrianism is an old one.

3. (uncountable) The way of life committed to by monks and nuns.

   • The monk entered religion when he was 20 years of age.

4. (uncountable, informal) Rituals and actions associated with religious beliefs, but considered apart from them.

   • I think some Christians would love Jesus more if they weren't so stuck in religion.
   • Jack's spiritual, but he's not really into religion.

5. (countable) Any practice to which someone or some group is seriously devoted.

   • At this point, Star Trek has really become a religion.

6. (uncountable, obsolete) Faithfulness to a given principle; conscientiousness.

verb

1. Engage in religious practice.

2. Indoctrinate into a specific religion.

   • To men whose minds are thus religioned, tied back to gods that never advance, there can never be any such word as progress

3. To make sacred or symbolic; sanctify.

   • The ideas expressed above challenge us to continuously rupture and interrupt racialized, classed, gendered, religioned and sexualized norms that inhere between and within institutions, understandings of bodies and our Selves.