father of the church
noun
Simple meaning
Any of about 70 theologians in the period from the 2nd to the 7th century whose writing established and confirmed official church doctrine.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fahtheruhvthuhcherchSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfɑðɚəvðətʃɚtʃ
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
christianity
Any of about 70 theologians in the period from the 2nd to the 7th century whose writing established and confirmed official church doctrine; in the Roman Catholic Church some were later declared saints and became Doctor of the Church; the best known Latin Church Fathers are Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Jerome; those who wrote in Greek include Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and John Chrysostom
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Any of about 70 theologians in the period from the 2nd to the 7th century whose writing established and confirmed official church doctrine; in the Roman Catholic Church some were later declared saints and became Doctor of the Church; the best known Latin Church Fathers are Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Jerome; those who wrote in Greek include Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and John Chrysostom
Used this way, father of the church 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
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Official and authoritative
- Usage feel
- Formal and precise
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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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.