ecclesiast

ecclesiast noun: a member of the Athenian ecclesia (public legislative assembly).

Noun

ecclesiast (plural ecclesiasts)

A member of the Athenian ecclesia (public legislative assembly).
(rare) A member of any ecclesia (church or other assembly).
- ... way of Grace, Charity, and this new way was to treat everyone as if he is your brother And that unlike the chosen race of the Jews you don't have to be born into this set of people the ecclesia which is the Greek word for Church, so to join the right church we automatically become an...2006, Richard Higgins, Gods Agenda with 2006 Apocalypse Calendar, →ISBN, page 133
- Menodora, from the otherwise unknown city of Sillyon, distributed cash awards [...] 77 [denarii] for each member of the assembly [...] In this city the members of the assembly (ecclesiasts) were clearly a privileged group, not co-extensive with the citizenry as a whole, The ecclesiasts’ wives were...2009, David S. Potter, A Companion to the Roman Empire, →ISBN, page 233
A cleric; someone (such as a priest) who administers a church (ecclesia) or other religious gathering/group.
- As we have seen, the Waldensians took the apostolic lives led by their barbes as proof that they spoke the truth, just as, contrariwise, it proved the priests who lived unworthy lives had no power. Again, Monet Rey gives the most precise explanation of the matter in 1494:
  The ecclesiasts had and...2007, Gabriel Audisio, Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries), →ISBN
- Furthermore, the large numbers of conversions in the Vietnamese polities of Tonkin and Cochinchina, widely publicized in Europe in the 1650s by jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes, had caused a dilemma. There were not enough priests to minister to these expanding flocks, yet the ecclesiasts of the Padroado...2012, Laura Jarnagin, Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511-2011, →ISBN

Proper noun capitalized: Ecclesiast

the Ecclesiast

The author of Ecclesiastes, traditionally considered to be King Solomon.

Examples of ecclesiast in a sentence

There were not enough priests to minister to these expanding flocks, yet the ecclesiasts of the Padroado Church were reluctant to sanction the ordination of local Christians.2012, Laura Jarnagin, Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511-2011, →ISBN:
Leonti Mroveli, it is assumed, was an ecclesiast, Mroveli being the adjective for the diocese of Ruisi, whose bishop he probably was.2013, Donald Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia: A History, Routledge, →ISBN, page 59:
Many of the ecclesiasts were executed shortly after they arrived.2015, Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story Of Auschwitz, →ISBN:

Forms of ecclesiast

plural	ecclesiasts
alternative form	ekklesiast

Origin of ecclesiast

From Middle English ecclesiaste, from Latin ecclēsiastēs, from Ancient Greek ἐκκλησιαστής (ekklēsiastḗs). By surface analysis, ecclesia + -ast.

Questions about ecclesiast

What does ecclesiast mean?: Ecclesiast means a member of the Athenian ecclesia (public legislative assembly).
How do you use ecclesiast in a sentence?: There were not enough priests to minister to these expanding flocks, yet the ecclesiasts of the Padroado Church were reluctant to sanction the ordination of local Christians.
What part of speech is ecclesiast?: Ecclesiast can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of ecclesiast?: The plural of ecclesiast is ecclesiasts.

Words near ecclesiast in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: ecclesiast (page history and authors); Ecclesiast (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: 2026-09-02

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