What does "ishtar" mean?

A goddess of fertility, love, sex, and war. In the Babylonian pantheon, she was the divine personification of the planet Venus; the Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the northwest-Semitic goddess Astarte.

What is a synonym for "ishtar"?

Common synonyms include: mylitta.

Ishtar

name

name ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun

1
A goddess of fertility, love, sex, and war. In the Babylonian pantheon, she was the divine personification of the planet Venus; the Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the northwest-Semitic goddess Astarte.

Synonyms

All synonyms

mylitta

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Akkadian 𒀭𒈹 (Ištar). Doublet of Astarte and Ashtoreth. Despite modern folk-etymology, not related in any way to English Easter.

Related phrases

sexual intercourse

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.