Origin Story
Fanatic is a word born in the temple. The Latin word for a temple was fanum, and from it came fanaticus, meaning "belonging to a temple, possessed by a god, raving." In certain temples of old Rome, worshippers would be swept up by music and dance into ecstasy, behaving wildly as though a god had entered their bodies. It was this state that was called fanaticus. When fanatic entered English in the 16th century, it first described "someone madly devoted to religion," then gradually came to mean anyone obsessed beyond reason with anything at all. The word fan, seen earlier, is simply the shortened form of fanatic.
From the same fanum ("temple") also came profane ("irreverent, secular") — literally "in front of the temple," that is, outside the sacred ground. The sacred (inside the temple) and the secular (outside it) thus branched from a single root.
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Online Etymology Dictionaryfanatic (n.): 1520s, "insane person," from Latin fanaticus "mad, enthusiastic, inspired by a god," originally "pertaining to a temple," from fanum "temple, shrine, consecrated place"
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Merriam-Webster Dictionaryfanatic: from Latin fanaticus inspired by a deity, frenzied, from fanum temple
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Oxford English Dictionaryfanatic: from Latin fanaticus "of a temple, inspired by a god," from fanum "temple"
Word Evolution
Words from the Same Root
Memory Hook
Remember fanatic as "one seized by the temple (fanum)." Fan is its short form.
""The root of anyone madly obsessed was a worshipper, god-possessed, in the temple.""
