mother church
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.90 in modern English
27
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The Church regarded as nourishing and protecting its members.
noun
A church with oversight over another or others, now especially a cathedral or metropolitan church.
noun
The original denomination or community of believers from which other denominations and communities of believers sprang.
Example Sentences
- "Catholics regard Mary as Mother of the Church but an all-male hierarchy as the Mother Church."
- "Mothering Sunday arose from the custom of visiting mother churches at Mid-Lent, rather than the usual parish church."
- "The mother church of Christian Scientists is in Boston, Massachusetts."
- "The Church of England is the mother church of Anglicans around the world."
- "Not Rome, but Ierusalem should be the Mother Church."
- "Puritanism is the mother church of Western democracy."
Etymology
From an association of spiritual comfort and hierarchy with familial relationships, probably originally as a calque of similar expressions in other languages, especially 2nd-century Latin mater ecclesia (“mother church”) and 12th-century Old French mere eglise (“mother church”).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
daughter church