monolatryn.
/məˈnɒlətri/, /mɒˈnɒlətri/, U.S. /məˈnɑlətri/ The worship of one god, esp. where other gods may be supposed to exist.
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society > faith > worship > kinds of worship > [noun] > of a deity > of one deity
monolatry1881
1881 W. R. Smith Old Test. in Jewish Church x. 273 The religion of the Old Testament is no mere natural variety of Semitic monolatry.
1886 T. H. Huxley in 19th Cent. Apr. 495 A worship of one God—monolatry as Wellhausen calls it—which is very different from genuine monotheism.
1892 C. G. Montefiore Hibbert Lect. i. 11 Monolatry is the worship of one god; monotheism, of the one and only God.
1932 R. Knox Broadcast Minds vii. 173 Mr Heard..does not even attempt..to trace the stages by which monotheism developed out of monolatry.
1952 H. H. Gerth & D. A. Martindale tr. M. Weber Anc. Judaism v. 138 This monolatry is explained..from the fact that they had no differentiated culture productive of functional deities.
1980 Ethics 90 521 (note) Monotheism..is not to be confused with earlier or later ‘monolatry’ as the emphasis on one god to the extreme of tending to exclude others.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2002; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1881