[ad. L. cultus worship (f. colĕre to attend to, cultivate, respect, etc.), and its F. adaptation culte (1611 Cotgr.). Used in 17th c. (? from Latin), and then rarely till the middle of the 19th, when often spelt culte as in French.]
† 1. Worship; reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings. Obs. (exc. as in sense 2).
1617. Collins, Def. Bp. Ely, II. ix. 371. You tell vs most absurdly of a diuine cult … (for so cult you are, or so quilted in your tearmes). Ibid., 389. You … referre it to the cult that you so foolishly talked of.
1657–83. Evelyn, Hist. Relig. (1850), II. 39. God, abolishing the cult of Gentile idols.
1683. D. A., Art Converse, 92. That Sovereign Cult due to God only.
2. A particular form or system of religious worship; esp. in reference to its external rites and ceremonies.
1679. Penn, Addr. Prot., II. App. 245. Let not every circumstantial difference or Variety of Cult be Nick-named a new Religion.
1699. Shaftesb., Charac., Inq. conc. Virtue, I. III. § 2. In the Cult or Worship of such a Deity.
1850. Gladstone, Homer, II. 211. While she [Proserpine] has a cult or worship on earth, he [Aidoneus] apparently has none.
1859. L. Oliphant, China & Japan, I. xii. 242. They are devoted in their attentions to the objects of their culte.
1874. Mahaffy, Soc. Life Greece, xi. 350. The cult of Aphrodite.
3. transf. Devotion or homage to a particular person or thing, now esp. as paid by a body of professed adherents or admirers.
1711. Shaftesb., Charac., III. i. (1737), I. 281. Convinc’d of the Reality of a better Self, and of the Cult or Homage which is due to It.
1829. A. W. Fonblanque, Eng. under 7 Administr. (1837), I. 238. These cults are generally to be found in the same house.
1879. Q. Rev., April, 368. The cult of Beauty, as the most vivid image of Truth.
1889. John Bull, 2 March, 141/2. An evidence of the decay of the Wordsworth cult.
