Faith & RitualGreek → English
Baptist
/ˈbæptɪst/noun
A member of a Protestant tradition that baptises believers by full immersion, or the title of John the Baptist.
The Greek roots
βαπτιστής
baptistḗs
one who dips
βάπτειν
báptein
to dip, immerse
Literally: “dipper”
The story of the word
βάπτω is an everyday Greek verb for dipping: cloth into dye, a blade into blood, bread into wine. The Christian sense is a specialisation of that plain act, which makes John literally John the Dipper. English has Baptist as a denomination from the 17th century, when the argument was whether the dipping belonged to infants or only to believers old enough to ask for it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
baptismbaptisteryanabaptist
In a sentence
Her grandmother was a Baptist and never once missed a Sunday.