anathema

Ancient Greek ἀνάθημα (anáthēma) meant a thing set up or dedicated. The noun comes from ἀνατίθημι (anatithēmi), "I set up, I dedicate." In sanctuaries, these were offerings hung or placed before a god. The term was neutral and even honoring.

A rival form ἀνάθεμα (anáthema) took on a harsher sense in religious language. In the Greek Bible, it rendered Hebrew ḥerem, a devoted thing under a ban. That shift moved the word from gift to curse. By late antiquity, it was a formal term for exclusion.

Latin adopted it as anathema, used for a person or thing accursed. Church councils used the term in formulae of condemnation, and dates like 451 and 787 fixed it in public record. The word circulated in ecclesiastical Latin for centuries. Its tone was legal, not casual.

Middle English received anathema through church writing by the 1200s. The spelling stabilized in Early Modern English, and the meaning broadened to any person or idea intensely rejected. Today it still sounds formal and weighty. The older sense of a sacred dedication survives only in etymology.