myth · mythology
sacred stories; false belief
Today this word meansTales of gods and heroes. Also any widespread belief without foundation.
Mythos (story) + logos (word, reason).
Curiously, mythos and logos both originally meant "speech." Their split — one into "invented speech," the other into "reasoned speech" — came only after philosophy was born.
Worth noting
The tinge of "myth = falsehood" did not exist in antiquity. To Homer, mythos was simply an utterance — if anything, an authoritative one.