Faith & RitualGreek → English
Church
/tʃɜrtʃ/noun
A building for Christian worship, or the body of believers who use it.
The Greek roots
κυριακόν
kyriakón
of the Lord
Literally: “the Lord's house”
Follow a root:κυριακόν1 word
The story of the word
Most Christian vocabulary reached English through Latin, but this word did not. Greek κυριακόν, from κύριος, lord, passed straight into the Germanic languages of the traders and soldiers along the Rhine frontier, giving Old English cirice, German Kirche and Scots kirk. The Romance languages went the other way and took ἐκκλησία, the assembly, which is why French has église and English has ecclesiastical for the adjective.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → West Germanic → Old English
- First recorded
- Old English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
kirkkyrie
In a sentence
The church at the end of the lane still rings its bell at six.