Word.ws English Dictionary

cardinalate

/ˈkɑː(ɹ)dɪnələt/

cardinalate noun: the dignity and ecclesiastic office of Roman Catholic cardinal.

Noun

cardinalate (plural cardinalates)

  1. The dignity and ecclesiastic office of Roman Catholic cardinal.
    • The cardinalate ranks equal to a secular prince of the blood.
    Synonyms:
    cardinalship
  2. The Roman Catholic cardinals, taken collectively.
    • The cardinalate under a maximum age composes the conclave which elects the pope.

Verb

cardinalate (third-person singular simple present cardinalates, present participle cardinalating, simple past and past participle cardinalated)

  1. (obsolete) To raise to the rank of cardinal.

Synonyms of cardinalate

Forms of cardinalate

Noun
pluralcardinalates
Verb
third-person singular presentcardinalates
present participlecardinalating
past participlecardinalated
pastcardinalated

Origin of cardinalate

Borrowed from Ecclesiastical Latin cardinālātus, from cardinālis (“cardinal”) + -ātus, itself the noun use of an adjective derived from cardō (“hinge, main point”) + -ālis (“-al”). By surface analysis, cardinal + -ate (forms nouns denoting rank or office).

First attested in 1587; from cardinal + -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Questions about cardinalate

What does cardinalate mean?
Cardinalate means the dignity and ecclesiastic office of Roman Catholic cardinal.
What part of speech is cardinalate?
Cardinalate can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cardinalate?
Cardinalate is pronounced /ˈkɑː(ɹ)dɪnələt/.
What is the plural of cardinalate?
The plural of cardinalate is cardinalates.

Words near cardinalate in the dictionary

  1. cardinal virtues
  2. cardinal vowel
  3. cardinal vowels
  4. cardinal-nephew
  5. cardinal-nephews
  6. cardinalate
  7. cardinalates
  8. Cardinale
  9. Cardinales
  10. cardinalfish
  11. cardinalfishes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cardinalate (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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