Other forms: churches
A church is the building with a cross and a bell where Christians pray. Go to church.
The word means both the building and the people in it, which causes constant confusion. A church is often the oldest building in an English village by four hundred years.
1nounchurchThe building with a cross and a bell where Christians pray.
“The church was locked except on Sundays and at harvest.”
church is a building.
From Greek kyriakós, belonging to the lord. The building was named for whose house it was held to be.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱewh₁-
Middle English
chirche
English, today
church
Built from
From Middle English chirche. From Middle English chirche, from Old English ċiriċe (“church”), from Proto-West Germanic kirikā, an early borrowing of Ancient Greek κυριακόν, neuter form of κυριακός (“belonging to the lord”), from κύριος (“ruler, lord”), from Proto-Indo-European ḱewh₁- (“to swell, spread out, be strong, prevail”). a doublet of kirk.2 For vowel evolution, see bury. κυριακόν was used of houses of Christian worship since circa 300, especially in the East, though it was less common in this sense than ἐκκλησία (“congregation”) or βασιλική (“royal thing”). An example of the direct Greek-to-Germanic progress of many Christian words, possibly via the Goths; it was probably used by West Germanic people in their pre-Christian period. Cognate with Scots kirk (“church”), West Frisian tsjerke (“church”), stq Säärke (“church”), Dutch kerk (“church”), German Kirche (“church”), Danish kirke (“church”), Swedish kyrka (“church”), Norwegian Bokmål kirke, Norwegian Nynorsk kyrkje (“church”), and Faroese and Icelandic kirkja (“church”). Also picked up by Slavic, via Old High German chirihha (compare cu црькꙑ, Bulgarian църква, Russian це́рковь). Romance and Celtic languages use descendants of Latin ecclēsia.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA