apostolic
adjective
Simple meaning
Relating to the early followers of Jesus or their ideas.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
apawstawlikSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
æpɔsˈtɔlɪk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Christianity
Of or relating to or deriving from the Apostles or their teachings
christianity
Pertaining to apostles or their practice or teaching; pertaining to the apostles (of early Christianity) or their teachings.
Of or pertaining to the pope or the papacy; papal.
Of or pertaining to the Catholic missions.
According to the doctrines of the apostles; delivered or taught by the apostles.
Proceeding from or ordered by or subject to a pope or the papacy regarded as the successor of the Apostles
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Of or relating to or deriving from the Apostles or their teachings
Used this way, apostolic is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A representative of the Holy See in a country that has no formal diplomatic relations with it.
An independent Christian church established in Armenia since 300.
A titular Roman Catholic bishop in a non-Catholic area.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.