Word.ws English Dictionary

nomen sacrum

UK/ˌnəʊmɛn ˈseɪkɹəm/US/ˌnoʊmən ˈsækɹəm/

nomen sacrum noun: an abbreviation of a commonly-occurring holy name or title in early Christian manuscripts, consisting of at least two letters from the full spelling spanned by an overline.

Noun

nomen sacrum (plural nomina sacra)

  1. (historical) An abbreviation of a commonly-occurring holy name or title in early Christian manuscripts, consisting of at least two letters from the full spelling spanned by an overline.

Forms of nomen sacrum

pluralnomina sacra

Origin of nomen sacrum

Unadapted borrowing from Latin nomen sacrum (“holy name”).

Questions about nomen sacrum

What does nomen sacrum mean?
Nomen sacrum means an abbreviation of a commonly-occurring holy name or title in early Christian manuscripts, consisting of at least two letters from the full spelling spanned by an overline.
What part of speech is nomen sacrum?
Nomen sacrum is a noun.
How do you pronounce nomen sacrum?
Nomen sacrum is pronounced /ˌnəʊmɛn ˈseɪkɹəm/ (UK).
What is the plural of nomen sacrum?
The plural of nomen sacrum is nomina sacra.

Words near nomen sacrum in the dictionary

  1. nomen periculosum
  2. nomen protectum
  3. nomen rectum
  4. nomen regens
  5. nomen relativum
  6. nomen sacrum
  7. nomen translatum
  8. nomen unitatis
  9. nomen vasis
  10. nomen verbi
  11. nomen vicis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nomen sacrum (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: “nomen sacrum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nomen_sacrum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.