What is the word for "All Being" (similar to omnipotent for all powerful)
I'm looking for a word for "All Being" to describe deity existing, always existing, and existing for eternity.
Other words often used to describe deity include:
- omnipotent—all powerful
- omnipresent—present everywhere at the same time
- omniscient—all knowing
None of these words describe a being/deity that has always existed and will always exist. A being that exists because he/she exists; i.e., needs nothing/nobody else to define his/her existence.
Does such a word exist?
This may verge into theology here; but if you want to talk about the relationship of a deity to time, one common word is eternal:
: having no beginning and no end in time : lasting forever
: existing at all times : always true or valid
(merriam-webster.com)
Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, defines eternity (following the Christian philosopher Boethius) as
the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life
and argues that this characterizes God.
If this is what you're looking for, use the word eternal.
The Everlasting:
Sempiternal, Æviternal, Omniëssent, & Omnitemporal
It is not clear why eternal or everlasting wouldn’t be good enough as is, but if you want a higher-falutin’ term, the most obvious answer is sempiternal, which the OED defines as:
Enduring constantly and continually; everlasting, eternal.
That takes the Latin semper meaning “ever” or “always” and combines it with ‑ternal to produce a fancy word meaning “everlasting”.¹
The OED also attests the adjective ever-being with the sense “that which always is”, although the resulting noun everbeingness the OED considers obsolete.
A rather less common word with the same meaning as sempiternal is aeviternal (also spelt æviternal), which the OED defines as:
Everlasting, endless, eternal.
This time it comes from aevum meaning “an age”, which is related to aeon (sometimes spelt æon or eon) and thence to Greek αἰών.
This is related to but different from longeval (also spelt longaeval or longæval), which just means long-lasting or long-lived, not ever-lasting or ever-living. But you can see the same aevum root at work, this time at the end of the word instead of at its beginning.
The word omniessent (also spelt omni-essent or omniëssent) that was kindly suggested by Janus in a potentially ephemeral² comment is simply the adjective corresponding to the noun omni-essence, which the OED defines as:
universal essence or being
To me omniessent more suggests ubiquity of being than it does omnitemporaneity of the same.
Speaking of omnitemporaneousness, that brings me to my final entry, omnitemporal, defined by the OED as:
relating to all times; including in its meaning all the various tenses
Summary: Native or Fancy?
These are all long and highly fancy — perhaps even fanciful — words built of Latinate roots from antiquity instead of being built of native roots the way everlasting and everbeing are.
As such, they might have a place in a lofty register such as that of Aquinas, but for more casual ones, simpler words are likely better.
Footnotes:
- This is like how sempervirent is a fancy word that means “evergreen”, visible in the taxon for the coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens.
One should take some care not to confuse sempervirent with sempervivent, where the latter means “everliving” or “lives-forever”, a term once applied to the succulent we call hen-and-chicks or houseleek and which survives as the genus Sempervivum.
- Where ephemeral and eternal are antonyms.
RHK Webster's has:
Immanent: 2. (of the Deity) indwelling the universe, time, etc.