churches
noun · verb
Form of church , plural of church.
Simple meaning
A service conducted in a house of worship.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
churchuhzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtʃɝtʃəz
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.
noun
plural of church
A service conducted in a house of worship
plural of church
A Christian house of worship; a building where Christian religious services take place.
plural of church
Christians collectively seen as a single spiritual community; Christianity; Christendom.
plural of church
The body of people who attend or belong to a particular local church
verb
third-person singular of church
To educate someone religiously, as in a church.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A service conducted in a house of worship
Used this way, churches is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a religious use: it carries the weight of tradition and ceremony.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Religion/spirituality
- Historical writing
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.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
One of the groups of Christians who have their own beliefs and forms of worship.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An ecumenical organization of Protestant and eastern churches.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The national church of England (and all other churches in other countries that share its beliefs).
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.