Word.ws English Dictionary

motu proprio

/ˌməʊtuː ˈpɹɒpɹɪəʊ/

motu proprio adverb: of one’s own free will, of one’s own volition.

Adverb

motu proprio (not comparable)

  1. Of one’s own free will, of one’s own volition.

Noun

motu proprio (plural motu proprios)

  1. A document issued by the Pope on his own initiative directed to the Roman Catholic Church.

Forms of motu proprio

pluralmotu proprios

Origin of motu proprio

From Medieval Latin motu proprio, from ablative form of classical Latin motus (“motion”) + proprius (“one’s own”).

Questions about motu proprio

What does motu proprio mean?
Motu proprio means of one’s own free will, of one’s own volition.
What part of speech is motu proprio?
Motu proprio can be an adverb or a noun.
How do you pronounce motu proprio?
Motu proprio is pronounced /ˌməʊtuː ˈpɹɒpɹɪəʊ/.

Words near motu proprio in the dictionary

  1. mottramite
  2. Mottrams
  3. motts
  4. motty
  5. motu
  6. motu proprio
  7. motu proprios
  8. Motuan
  9. motuca
  10. motucas
  11. Motueka

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: motu proprio (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: “motu proprio.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/motu_proprio. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.