Word.ws English Dictionary

dicastery

dicastery noun: a ministry or department of the Roman Curia of the Holy See, whether administrative or ecclesiastical.

Noun

dicastery (plural dicasteries)

  1. A ministry or department of the Roman Curia of the Holy See, whether administrative or ecclesiastical.
    • The dicastery will continue to oversee the appointment of bishops in the mission territories. … There is no longer a distinction between congregations and pontifical councils because all the Vatican’s main departments are now defined as dicasteries.2022 March 21, Andrea Gagliarducci, “Praedicate evangelium: Things you might have missed in the new Vatican constitution”, in Catholic News Agency, Denver: EWTN News, retrieved 25 Mar 2022
    • The Argentine pontiff summoned him to Rome in 2023 to head the powerful dicastery for bishop appointments—a job that allowed him to build networks across the Catholic leadership.2025 May 10, “Chicagoan pope not afraid of speaking truth to power in US”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3
  2. (Ancient Greece) A judicial body of the ancient Athenian state, made up of dicasts.
    • The better cause has conquered; and there is at least this advantage to the Athenian legal system, there will be no appeal nor tedious technicalities before a "higher court." The verdict of the dicastery is final.1910, William Stearns Davis, A Day in Old Athens

dicastery meaning in Vietnamese

dicastery in Vietnamese

administrative body of the Vatican
bộ, thánh bộ

Forms of dicastery

pluraldicasteries

Origin of dicastery

From Ancient Greek δικαστήριον (dikastḗrion, “court, tribunal”), from δίκη (díkē, “right, custom, judgement”).

Words formed from dicastery

Questions about dicastery

What does dicastery mean?
Dicastery means a ministry or department of the Roman Curia of the Holy See, whether administrative or ecclesiastical.
What is dicastery in Vietnamese?
Dicastery in Vietnamese is bộ, thánh bộ. See Dicastery meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is dicastery?
Dicastery is a noun.
What is the plural of dicastery?
The plural of dicastery is dicasteries.

Words near dicastery in the dictionary

  1. dicaryophytes
  2. dicaryotic
  3. dicast
  4. dicasterial
  5. dicasteries
  6. dicastery
  7. dicastic
  8. dicasts
  9. dicatalectic
  10. dication
  11. dicationic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dicastery (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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