Word.ws English Dictionary

crosier

/ˈkɹəʊzi.ə/US/ˈkɹoʊʒɚ/

crosier noun: a staff with a hooked end similar to a shepherd's crook, or with a cross at the end, carried by an abbot, bishop, or archbishop as a symbol of office.

crosier: a staff with a hooked end similar to a shepherd's crook, or with a cross at the end, carried by an...
Image: Francisco Dionisio de Ribas, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

crosier (plural crosiers)

  1. A staff with a hooked end similar to a shepherd's crook, or with a cross at the end, carried by an abbot, bishop, or archbishop as a symbol of office.
    • […]the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword.1788, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume V, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC
    • “Nay, most gracious sovereign,” answered the Hermit, (well known to the curious in penny-histories of Robin Hood, by the name of Friar Tuck,) “it is not the crosier I fear, but the sceptre. […]”1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co....
  2. A young fern frond, before it has unrolled.
    Synonyms:
    fiddlehead

Proper noun capitalized: Crosier

Crosier (plural Crosiers)

  1. A surname.

crosier meaning in Malayalam, Tagalog, Arabic and Persian

crosier in Malayalam

staff of a bishop or abbot
അംശവടി aṁśavaṭi

crosier in Tagalog

staff of a bishop or abbot
bakulo

crosier in Arabic

staff of a bishop or abbot
عَصًا ʕaṣan

crosier in Persian

staff of a bishop or abbot
چوگان čowgân

Synonyms of crosier

Forms of crosier

Noun
pluralcrosiers
alternative formcrozier
Proper noun
pluralCrosiers

Origin of crosier

From Middle English; originally referring to the staff bearer, from a merger of Old French words crocier (“bearer of a cross”) and croisier (“one who bears or has to do with a cross”), ultimately from Latin crux (“cross”).

Words formed from crosier

Questions about crosier

What does crosier mean?
Crosier means a staff with a hooked end similar to a shepherd's crook, or with a cross at the end, carried by an abbot, bishop, or archbishop as a symbol of office.
What is crosier in Malayalam?
Crosier in Malayalam is അംശവടി (aṁśavaṭi). See Crosier meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is crosier?
Crosier can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce crosier?
Crosier is pronounced /ˈkɹəʊzi.ə/ (UK).
What is the plural of crosier?
The plural of crosier is crosiers.

Words near crosier in the dictionary

  1. Crose
  2. Croses
  3. croshabell
  4. croshabells
  5. Croshaw
  6. crosier
  7. crosiered
  8. crosiers
  9. Croskey
  10. Croskeys
  11. croski

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crosier (page history and authors); Crosier (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-crosier.wav.

Cite this entry: “crosier.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crosier. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.