This article discusses cult in the original sense of "religious practice." It does not discuss religious or sociological cultist groups or uses in the sense of "cultural sub-group," as in cult film, etc. In traditional usage, the cult of a religion, quite apart from its sacred writings ("scriptures"), its theology or myth, or the personal faith of its believers, is the totality of external religious practice and observance, the neglect of which is the definition of impiety. Cult is literally the "care" owed to the god and the shrine. The term "cult" first appeared in English in 1617, derived from the French culte, meaning "worship" or "a particular form of worship" which in turn originated from the Latin word cultus meaning "care, cultivation, worship," originally "tended, cultivated," also the past participle of colere "to till". Thus in French, for example, sections in new

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