Faith & RitualGreek → English
Pope
/poʊp/noun
The bishop of Rome, head of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Greek roots
πάππας
páppas
papa, father
Literally: “papa”
Follow a root:πάππας1 word
The story of the word
πάππας is a child's word for father, and early Christians used it as an affectionate title for any bishop. In the Greek church it stayed at ground level: a village priest is still ὁ παπάς. In the West it climbed, and in 1075 Gregory VII declared in the Dictatus papae that the name belonged to the bishop of Rome alone. Old English already had pāpa, borrowed from Latin long before that ruling.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old English
- First recorded
- Old English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
papacypapalpapist
In a sentence
The pope said the mass in the square in front of forty thousand people.