churchwarden

Noun

churchwarden (plural churchwardens)

1. (UK) A lay officer of the Church of England who handles the secular affairs of the parish.
   • At first, not knowing any better, I used sometimes to copy a nude on the pavement. The first I did was outside St Martin's-in-the-Fields church. A fellow in black—I suppose he was a churchwarden or something—came out in a tearing rage.1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXXI, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC
   • But what villager could have foreseen that their neighbor was to be commissioner for the government of Massachusetts, church elder, town selectman, judge of small causes, and town deputy to the Massachusetts legislature? The people of Weyhill [in Hampshire, England], who had seen Peter Noyes serve...1963, Sumner Chilton Powell, “Chapter I: The Web of Open-field Life”, in Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, Wesleyan University Press
2. (US) A similar functionary of the Episcopal church.