Word.ws English Dictionary

cierge

UK/sɪə̯dʒ/US/sɪɹd͡ʒ/

cierge noun: a wax candle used in religious rites.

cierge: a wax candle used in religious rites
Image: Andreas JAnik, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cierge (plural cierges)

  1. A wax candle used in religious rites.
    • The fire was lighted in the drawing-room, and in the soft obscurity Toppie with her high golden head looked like a tall white lighted cierge; a Christmas cierge in a votive chapel of a great cathedral; for though so sweet, so almost gay, the background to Toppie's gaiety was something dedicated and...1924, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, “Chapter 7”, in The Little French Girl

Forms of cierge

pluralcierges

Origin of cierge

From earlier cerge, from Middle English serge, cerge, from Old French cierge, cerge from Latin cereus (“waxy”), from cera (“wax”). The current pronunciation is learnedly taken from modern French cierge (with varying degrees of nativisation).

Questions about cierge

What does cierge mean?
Cierge means a wax candle used in religious rites.
What part of speech is cierge?
Cierge is a noun.
How do you pronounce cierge?
Cierge is pronounced /sɪə̯dʒ/ (UK).
What is the plural of cierge?
The plural of cierge is cierges.

Words near cierge in the dictionary

  1. Cienfuegos
  2. Cienfuegoses
  3. Cieplucha
  4. Ciepluchas
  5. Ciera
  6. cierge
  7. cierges
  8. Cieri
  9. Cieris
  10. Cierra
  11. Ciesielski

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cierge (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: “cierge.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cierge. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.