Ecclesiastical
[ɪ,kliːzɪ'æstɪk(ə)l] or [ɪ,klizɪ'æstɪkl]
Definition
(adj.) of or associated with a church (especially a Christian Church); 'ecclesiastic history' .
Checked by Barry--From WordNet
Definition
(a.) Of or pertaining to the church; relating to the organization or government of the church; not secular; as, ecclesiastical affairs or history; ecclesiastical courts.
Checker: Zelig
Synonyms and Synonymous
a. Not civil, not secular.
Editor: Rochelle
Examples
- I am not so ecclesiastical as Naumann, and I sometimes twit him with his excess of meaning. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- The present universities of Europe were originally, the greater part of them, ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the education of churchmen. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche of early Gothic architecture, took the money. Charles Dickens. Hard Times.
- Their ecclesiastical government is conducted upon a plan equally frugal. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- The religious investigations of William James were a study, not of ecclesiastical institutions or the history of creeds. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
- According to him, the cup of ecclesiastical guilt was now full indeed. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
- In the colonies of all those three nations, too, the ecclesiastical government is extremely oppressive. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house, and I dined in a little octagonal common-room, like a font. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations.
Editor: Rochelle