Myth vs. Archetype

Mythnoun

A traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a sacred narrative regarding a god, a hero, the origin of the world or of a people, etc.

Archetypenoun

An original model of which all other similar concepts, objects, or persons are merely copied, derivative, emulated, or patterned; a prototype.

Mythnoun

(uncountable) Such stories as a genre.

‘Myth was the product of man's emotion and imagination, acted upon by his surroundings. (E. Clodd, Myths & Dreams (1885), 7, cited after OED)’;

Archetypenoun

An ideal example of something; a quintessence.

Mythnoun

A commonly-held but false belief, a common misconception; a fictitious or imaginary person or thing; a popular conception about a real person or event which exaggerates or idealizes reality.

Archetypenoun

(literature) A character, object, or story that is based on a known character, object, or story.

Mythnoun

A person or thing held in excessive or quasi-religious awe or admiration based on popular legend

‘Father Flanagan was legendary, his institution an American myth. (Tucson (Arizona) Citizen, 20 September 1979, 5A/3, cited after OED)’;

Archetypenoun

(psychology) According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung: a universal pattern of thought, present in an individual's unconscious, inherited from the past collective experience of humanity.

Mythnoun

A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable.

Archetypenoun

(textual criticism) A original manuscript of a text from which all further copies derive.

Mythnoun

A story of great but unknown age which originally embodied a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; an ancient legend of a god, a hero, the origin of a race, etc.; a wonder story of prehistoric origin; a popular fable which is, or has been, received as historical.

Archetypeverb

To depict as, model using, or otherwise associate an object or subject with an archetype.

Mythnoun

A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable.

‘As for Mrs. Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years.’;

Archetypenoun

The original pattern or model of a work; or the model from which a thing is made or formed.

‘The House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies which now meet.’; ‘Types and shadows of that glorious archetype that was to come into the world.’;

Mythnoun

a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world view of a people

Archetypenoun

The standard weight or coin by which others are adjusted.

Myth

Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. The main characters in myths are usually non-humans, such as gods, demigods, and other supernatural figures.

Archetypenoun

The plan or fundamental structure on which a natural group of animals or plants or their systems of organs are assumed to have been constructed; as, the vertebrate archetype.

Archetypenoun

an original model on which something is patterned

Archetypenoun

a very typical example of a certain person or thing

‘he was the archetype of the old-style football club chairman’;

Archetypenoun

an original which has been imitated; a prototype

‘an instrument which was the archetype of the early flute’;

Archetypenoun

(in Jungian theory) a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious.

Archetypenoun

a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology

‘mythological archetypes of good and evil’;

Archetype

The concept of an archetype (; from Greek: ἄρχω, árkhō, 'to begin' + τῠ́πος, túpos, 'sort, type') appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be: a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, form, or a main model that other statements, patterns of behavior, and objects copy, emulate, or into.

‘first’; ‘merge’;