Other forms: bishops
A bishop is the senior priest in charge of all the churches in one area, with a tall pointed hat and a curved staff. In chess, the bishop is the piece with the split top that slides along the diagonals for as far as the board allows.
The chess piece keeps the churchman's hat: that notch cut in the top is the split in a bishop's mitre. Each side starts with two bishops, one on light squares and one on dark, and neither ever changes colour for the whole game — which is why players talk about a good bishop and a bad bishop, and why bishops of opposite colours drag so many endings into a draw. In the church, a bishop's area is a diocese, an archbishop stands above him, and the whole arrangement is called episcopal. The word takes a capital in front of a name: Bishop Cotter. In England a number of bishops sit in the House of Lords.
1nounprelateA senior Christian priest who is in charge of the churches of a whole area.~98%
“The bishop visits every parish in the diocese once a year.”
synonyms: prelate
2nounbishopThe chess piece that moves any distance along the diagonals.~2%
“She gave up a bishop for a knight and wrecked his pawns doing it.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Bishop is Greek in disguise. Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος meant overseer — ἐπί, over, plus σκοπός, watcher — and Latin took it up as episcopus. Spoken Latin wore the front off it into biscopus, Germanic speakers borrowed that, and Old English wrote it bisċop. Every European language has its version of the word; English is the one that lost the E at the start.
Ancient Greek
ἐπίσκοπος — overseer
Vulgar Latin
biscopus
Proto-West Germanic
*biskop
Old English
bisċop — bishop
Middle English
bischop
English, today
bishop
Built from
From Middle English bischop, bishop, bisshop, biscop, from Old English bisċop (“bishop”), from Proto-West Germanic biskop, from Vulgar Latin biscopus, from classical Latin episcopus (“overseer, supervisor”), from Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος (“overseer”), from ἐπί (“over”) + σκοπός (“watcher”), used in Greek and Latin both generally and as a title of civil officers. Cognate with all European terms for the position in various Christian churches; compare also bisp (“bishop”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA