The word 'god' is an interesting one. The etymology of the word comes from the Proto-Germanic, Pre-Indo European root meaning "to invoke" or "to call upon". This conjures up thoughts of a god who can be summoned or called upon to bring about certain effects and thus its usage in language has been metaphorical for this reason I suppose.
The concept of god though goes beyond this notion because there are many different types of gods, some more powerful than others with varying levels of control over different aspects and things within their domain such as Athena being associated with wisdom and war strategy while Apollo had association with healing.
As for the concept of god, it is an interesting one. It has evolved over time and when you think about how many different descriptions there are of this entity that we call 'god', the term becomes even more problematic as to what exactly it means.
For instance Christianity talks about a monotheistic God who created the universe but other religions such as Hinduism believe in multiple gods and so do other belief systems which lead me to conclude that perhaps 'god' doesn't denote any specific meaning except for being something greater than humans can understand.
God is the Christian term for God. It derives from god, which comes from a Middle English word meaning 'good'. The Germanic forms of this stem are also seen in words such as good and gods.
The Indo-European root is *ghedh-, with English words such as good, goods and gothic.
The original meaning of the stem is 'to be healthy', but also to have supernatural powers.
From this stem, we get words of Latin origin such as health and God. It is also the root of Old Norse words meaning gods and hammer.
The original meaning of God is 'The one who has supernatural powers'. This also gives rise to the words such as godlike, and the German gods (gods in English).
From this root, we also get words meaning 'to be well'. This includes words such as good and goods.
God is a word which first appears in the English language around 1225 AD. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as 'A being that has great power, wisdom and goodness; the perfect embodiment of good.'
The word God comes from the Old English language, but there are a few different words which are related to it. Here is an example of one:
In German the word is Gott. God also has other variants such as Cud, which comes from Hebrew and means 'Lord.' The English language is closely related to Old Norse and old German. When Christianity came to Germany, they used their own words for gods.
There are many different gods of the same name. In Norse mythology, there is a god named Odin. The God in Christianity is also called Allah or Yahweh by other religions.
In a sense, God is universal. It's a word that can be used to refer to any god.
That's what the word means etymologically. I hope you have a nice day!
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