Word.ws English Dictionary

cherubims

cherubims is the plural of cherub.

cherubims is the plural of cherubim.

Meaning of cherub

Noun

cherub (plural cherubs or cherubim or cherubims or (obsolete) cherubin)

  1. A winged creature attending God and guarding his throne described as a being with four faces (man, lion, ox, and eagle), human hands, calf hooves, four wings, and many eyes. A description can be found in Ezekiel chapter 1 and Ezekiel chapter 10; similar to a lamassu (winged bull with a human torso) in the pre-exilic texts of the Hebrew Bible, more humanoid in later texts.
  2. (post-biblical) A winged angel, described by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 5th–6th century) as the second highest order of angels, ranked above thrones and below seraphim.
    • Over the arcke were the cherubyns off glory shadowynge the seate of grace.1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, The Pistle off Paul unto the Hebrues ix:[5], folio cccviii, recto
  3. In later texts changed to a winged baby; in artistic depictions sometimes a baby's head with wings but no body.
    • For ſome colour of ſetting vp their idols in Churches to bee worſhiped, they full ſimply alledge the Cherubins that were ſet vp in the temple which Solomon built, which M. [William] Bishop ſaith were the images of Angels, and that they did repreſent the Angels wee will not deny, but of what ſhape...1611, Robert Abbot, “Of Images”, in The Second Part of the Defence of the Reformed Catholicke. […], London: Impensis Thomæ Adams, →OCLC, page 1164
    Synonyms:
    amoretto, cupid, putto
  4. (figuratively) A person, especially a child, seen as being particularly angelic or innocent.
    • Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd Cherubin.c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. […] (First Quarto), London: […] N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Walkley, […], published 1622, →OCLC, [Act...
    Synonyms:
    angel, innocent

Meaning of cherubim

Noun

cherubim (plural cherubims)

  1. A cherub.
    • As he looks up at the organ, Miss Tox in the gallery shrinks behind the fat leg of a cherubim on a monument, with cheeks like a young Wind, Captain Cuttle, on the contrary, stands up and waves his hook, in token of welcome and encouragement.1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC

Noun capitalized: Cherubims

Cherubims

  1. (plural) plural of Cherubim

Origin of cherubims

From Hebrew cherubim כרוב, cherub + -ים; the Hebrew is plural, but the translators chose to add -s when borrowing the word into the English form, probably because the readers of the Authorized Version would not be familiar with Hebrew or Latin plurals.

Questions about cherubims

What is cherubims the plural of?
Cherubims is the plural of cherub.
What part of speech is cherubims?
Cherubims is a noun.

Words near cherubims in the dictionary

  1. cherubical
  2. cherubically
  3. cherubim
  4. cherubimic
  5. cherubimical
  6. cherubims
  7. cherubin
  8. cherubins
  9. cherubism
  10. cherubless
  11. cherublike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cherubims (page history and authors); Cherubims (page history and authors); cherub (page history and authors); cherubim (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: “cherubims.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cherubims. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.