Word.ws English Dictionary

ex cathedra

ex cathedra prepositional phrase: with authority based on one's rank or office.

Prepositional phrase

  1. With authority based on one's rank or office.
    • The best training for style is speech; not monologues, or lectures ex cathedra, like those of the German professors, of whose uninterrupted didacticity their literature bears too many marks1826, Julius Hare, Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers
    • Five-star reviews of it [the film Hamnet] could fill one of those posters on Tube platforms. Some come from critics whose views are treated as ex cathedra.2026 January 31, Janan Ganesh, “The Hamnet wars”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 20

Origin of ex cathedra

Borrowed from Latin ex cathedrā (“from the (teacher's) chair”).

Questions about ex cathedra

What does ex cathedra mean?
Ex cathedra means with authority based on one's rank or office.
What part of speech is ex cathedra?
Ex cathedra is a prepositional phrase.

Words near ex cathedra in the dictionary

  1. EWYK
  2. ewys
  3. ex
  4. ex abundante cautela
  5. ex ante
  6. ex cathedra
  7. ex cetera
  8. ex contractu
  9. ex copula
  10. ex delicto
  11. ex dividend

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ex cathedra (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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