Superstitious beliefs

Superstition is pejorative term for any belief or practice that is irrational - i.e., it arises from ignorance, a misunderstanding of science or causality, a positive belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which is unknown. "Superstition" also refers to religious beliefs or actions arising from irrationality.

The word superstition is often used to refer to a religion not practiced by the majority of a given society regardless of whether the prevailing religion contains superstitions. It is also commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy, and certain spiritual beings, particularly the belief that future events can be foretold by specific (apparently) unrelated prior events.

The word superstition is first used in English in the 15th century, modelled after an earlier French superstition. The earliest known use as an English noun occurs in Friar Daw's Reply (ca. 1420), where the foure general synnes are enumerated as Cediciouns, supersticions, þe glotouns, & þe proude. The French word, together with its Romance cognates (Italian superstizione, Spanish superstición, Portuguese superstição, Catalan superstició) continues Latin superstitio.

While the formation of the Latin word is clear, from the verb , "to stand over, stand upon; survive", its original intended sense is less clear. It can be interpreted as "‘standing over a thing in amazement or awe", but other possibilities have been suggested, e.g. the sense of excess, i.e. over scrupulousness or over-ceremoniousness in the performing of religious rites, or else the survival of old, irrational religious habits.

The earliest known use as a Latin noun occurs in Plautus, Ennius and later by Pliny, with the meaning of art of divination. From its use in the Classical Latin of Livy and Ovid (1st century BC), the term is used in the pejorative sense it still holds today, of an excessive fear of the gods or unreasonable religious belief, as opposed to , the proper, reasonable awe of the gods. Cicero derived the term from superstitiosi, lit. those who are "left over", i.e. "survivors", "descendants", connecting it with excessive anxiety of parents in hoping that their children would survive them to perform their necessary funerary rites. While Cicero distinguishes between religio and superstitio, Lucretius uses only the term religio (only with pejorative meaning). Throughout all of his work, he only distinguished between ratio and religio.

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