abbé
US/æˈbeɪ/
abbé noun: a low-ranking member of the Roman Catholic clergy in France who is not a member of a religious order, is not a priest, and can marry and inherit property; an honorific title for such a clergymember.
Noun
abbé (plural abbés)
- A low-ranking member of the Roman Catholic clergy in France who is not a member of a religious order, is not a priest, and can marry and inherit property; an honorific title for such a clergymember.
- At graduation [Pierre Simon] Laplace faced an anguishing dilemma. His master’s degree permitted him to take either the priestly vows of celibacy or the title of abbé, signifying a low-ranking clergyman who could marry and inherit property. Abbés did not have good reputations; Voltaire called them...2011, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, Yale...
- A French abbot, the (male) head of an abbey.
Forms of abbé
| plural | abbés |
|---|---|
| alternative form | abbe |
Origin of abbé
Unadapted borrowing from French abbé (“abbot”), from Latin abbās (“abbot”). Doublet of abbot.
Words that rhyme with abbé
Questions about abbé
- What does abbé mean?
- Abbé means a low-ranking member of the Roman Catholic clergy in France who is not a member of a religious order, is not a priest, and can marry and inherit property; an honorific title for such a clergymember.
- What part of speech is abbé?
- Abbé is a noun.
- How do you pronounce abbé?
- Abbé is pronounced /æˈbeɪ/ (US).
- What is the plural of abbé?
- The plural of abbé is abbés.
Words near abbé in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: abbé (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “abbé.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abb%C3%A9. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.