Middle English: from Old French idole, from Latin idolum 'image, form' (used in ecclesiastical Latin in the sense 'idol'), from Greek eidōlon, from eidos 'form, shape'.

• Both idyll (late 16th century) and idol go back to Greek eidos ‘form, shape, picture’. Its earliest uses in English were for false gods, images that people revered as objects of worship, and that Jewish and Christian tradition condemned. Outside religion, any object of excessive devotion has been called an idol since the mid 16th century, mainly in a condemnatory way. No one wanted to be a pop idol until the end of the 20th century, but in the 21st century it is such a common ambition that the reality TV contest Pop Idol has been an outstanding success. It is the ‘picture’ element that is prominent in idyll—a picture in words. When English adopted the word it meant ‘description of a picturesque scene or incident’, which is the sense in the title of Alfred Lord Tennyson's series of poems based on Arthurian legend, The Idylls of the King. Tennyson's popularization of the term in the mid 19th century led to the word idyllic and the development of the usual modern sense, ‘an extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque period or situation’.