Word.ws English Dictionary

high church

high church noun: a tradition within the Anglican church with an elevated view of the priesthood, episcopacy, and sacraments, practising a formal style of liturgy and emphasising continuity with Catholicism.

Noun (1)

high church (uncountable)

  1. (Anglicanism) A tradition within the Anglican church with an elevated view of the priesthood, episcopacy, and sacraments, practising a formal style of liturgy and emphasising continuity with Catholicism.
  2. (broadly) Any similar Christian tradition.

Adjective (1)

high church (comparative more high church, superlative most high church)

  1. Characteristic of or pertaining to such a tradition.

Noun (2) capitalized: High Church

High Church (uncountable)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of high church.

Adjective (2) capitalized: High Church

High Church (comparative more High Church, superlative most High Church)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of high church.

Forms of high church

Noun
alternative formHigh Church
alternative formhigh-church
Adjective
comparativemore high church
superlativemost high church
comparativemore High Church
superlativemost High Church

Origin of high church

Back-formation from High Churchman, originally denoting an opponent of religious toleration with high meaning “extreme”; see churchman (“supporter of the established church”). Compare High Tory.

Questions about high church

What does high church mean?
High church means a tradition within the Anglican church with an elevated view of the priesthood, episcopacy, and sacraments, practising a formal style of liturgy and emphasising continuity with Catholicism.
What part of speech is high church?
High church can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near high church in the dictionary

  1. high centring
  2. high chair
  3. high chairs
  4. high challenge
  5. high challenges
  6. high church
  7. High Churchism
  8. high churchman
  9. high churchmanship
  10. high churchmen
  11. high cockalorum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: high church (page history and authors); High Church (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:

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