The Collaborative International Dictionary
Heathen \Hea"then\ (h[=e]"[th]'n; 277), n.; pl. Heathens (-[th]'nz) or collectively Heathen. [OE. hethen, AS. h[=ae][eth]en, prop. an adj. fr. h[=ae][eth] heath, and orig., therefore, one who lives in the country or on the heaths and in the woods (cf. pagan, fr. pagus village); akin to OS. h[=e][eth]in, adj., D. heiden a heathen, G. heide, OHG. heidan, Icel. hei[eth]inn, adj., Sw. heden, Goth. hai[thorn]n[=o], n. fem. See Heath, and cf. Hoiden.]
An individual of the pagan or unbelieving nations, or those which worship idols and do not acknowledge the true God; a pagan; an idolater.
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An irreligious person.
If it is no more than a moral discourse, he may preach it and they may hear it, and yet both continue unconverted heathens.
--V. Knox.The heathen, as the term is used in the Scriptures, all people except the Jews; now used of all people except Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance.
--Ps. ii. 8.Syn: Pagan; gentile. See Pagan.
Wikipedia
"The Heathen" is a short story by the American writer Jack London. It was first published in Everybody's Magazine in August 1910, and later included in the collection of stories by London, The Strength of the Strong, published by Macmillan in 1914.
In the story, two people, from different cultural and racial backgrounds, are the only survivors of a ship that encounters a hurricane in the Pacific, and they remain together.
Usage examples of "the heathen".
The other man was the Heathen--at least that was what I heard Captain Oudouse call him at the moment I first became aware of the Heathen's existence.
As far as he remembered Father Andreas had said that Christians should be Christians or go to Hell with the heathen.
The imperishable bronze fittings for the catapults Erkenbert had made for the heathen Ivar had been genuine old work, as good as the day they were made.
As nothing is more flattering to the pride and the hopes of man than the belief in a future state, so nothing could be more vague and confused than the notions of the heathen sages upon that mystic subject.
Gibbon, with this phrase, and that below, which admits the injustice of Marcus, has dexterously glossed over one of the most remarkable facts in the early Christian history, that the reign of the wisest and most humane of the heathen emperors was the most fatal to the Christians.
Are the heathen not also subject to the ultimate will of the gods?
It was proclaimed by the Aedonites that here was the heathen altar, melted by the vengeful Fires of the One God.
Do you think you're the only one who can be sent to faraway lands to save the souls of the heathen?
Convert the heathen in a far-off land when Spain itself was not yet unified in its Christianity?