numen

Borrowed from Latin nūmen.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnjuː.mən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈnuː.mən/
• Rhymes: -uːmən

numen (plural numina)

1. A divinity, especially a local or presiding god.
   • 1671, Ralph Cudworth, chapter 4, in The True Intellectual System of the Universe:

     The Egyptians were doubtless the most singular of all the Pagans, and the most oddly discrepant from the rest in their manner of worship; yet nevertheless, that these also agreed with the rest in those fundamentals of worshipping one supreme and universal Numen […]

   • 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 76:

     Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who’d mothered over Oedipa’s so temperate youth?

   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

     It was the solid and immovable tabernacle of the living numen whose son he had known, though but briefly and not intimately, in the flesh, and whose message he accepted with all his heart.

2. An influence or phenomenon at once mystical and transcendent.
   • 1952 May, George Santayana, “I Like to Be a Stranger”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     […] but never did the places or the persons turn into idols for my irrational worship. It was only the numen in them that I loved, who, as I passed by abstracted, whispered some immortal word in my ear.

• numinous
• numinal

Could be simply an action noun of *nuō, for *nuimen, from *nuō + -men, thus meaning "a nodding with the head", "a nod", "command", "will" (as nūtus), with the particular meaning of "the divine will", "the will or power of the gods", "divine sway".

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈnuː.mɛn]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈnuː.men]

nūmen n (genitive nūminis); third declension

1. a nod of the head
   • c. 2nd century, Sextus Pompeius Festus, De Verborum Significatione p. 172:

     Numen quasi nutus dei ac potestas

     Numen is as if the nod and power of a god

2. divine sway or will
   • 106 BCE – 43 BCE, Cicero, In Catilinam 2.13.29:

     sed hic praesentes suo numine atque auxilio sua templa atque urbis tecta defendunt

     but standing here, they defend their temples and the buildings of their city with their divine will and aid

3. divine power or right
   • 8 CE, Ovidius, Fasti 6.251–252:

     in prece tōtus eram: caelestia nūmina sēnsī,
     laetaque purpureā lūce refulsit humus.

     [As] I was rapt in prayer, I sensed [the presence of] heavenly powers, and the joyful ground gleamed with purple light.
     (A poetic encounter with Vesta (mythology); see also Vestalia.)

4. divinity (Georges Dumézil argues this is a modern meaning and not one from the Classical period, where it was either attributed to particular gods or other entities, such as in numen Cereris or numen dei, or wrongly interpreted)
5. (by extension) fairy

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

• → English: numen, numinous
• → Italian: nume
• → Portuguese: nume, númen
• → Spanish: numen

• “numen”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “numen”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “numen”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎^[2], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • the sovereign power of the gods: numen (deorum) divinum
    

• IPA^(key): /ˈnumen/

numen

1. past participle of niman

Borrowed from French noumène.

numen n (uncountable)

1. noumenon

From Latin numen.

• IPA^(key): /ˈnumen/ [ˈnu.mẽn]
• Rhymes: -umen
• Syllabification: nu‧men

numen m (plural númenes)

1. numen
2. muse (source of inspiration)

   Synonyms: inspiración, musa

• “numen”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025