gratia

Gratia, gratiae, f., first declension, doing three separate jobs. Classical prose uses it for favour and social pull: gratia apud regem, "influence with the king". The fixed plural gratias agere is "to give thanks" - the thanks are always plural, and the verb is ago, never do. And the postpositive gratia takes a genitive in front of it to mean "for the sake of": exempli gratia, from which e.g.

The ecclesiastical sense, "grace" as an unearned gift from God, is a Christian extension and it dominates this corpus, so gratia dei there is not about anybody's popularity. Descendants everywhere: grace, gracious, grateful, gratis, gratuity, Spanish gracias, French grâce.