prebendary
/ˈpɹɛbəndəɹi/
prebendary noun: an honorary canon of a cathedral or collegiate church.
Noun
prebendary (plural prebendaries)
- An honorary canon of a cathedral or collegiate church.
- Among the prebendaries have been men eminent for their learning and piety: as Lancelot Andrews, bishop of Winchester, Dr. Sherlock, Archdeacon Paley, and the Rev. William Beloe, B.D. well known by his translation of Herodotus.1832 May 12, various authors, “St Pancras (Old) Church”, in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, volume 19, number 546
- Wolverhampton church, dedicated to St. Mary, was a collegiate establishment, with a dean as president, and a number of prebendaries or canons who were “secular” priests, and not brethren of any of the regular “orders of monks.” […] A prebendary, it may be explained, is one who enjoys a prebend or...1908, Frederick William Hackwood, The Annals of Willenhall
Adjective
prebendary (not comparable)
- Pertaining to the office or person of a prebendary; prebendal.
- This is at least a third of the way up the career path to being a saint. Conscientious men (and women for that matter) often hear a sort of susurration in their ears when they achieve this prebendary status.1992, Will Self, Cock and Bull
- Of or relating to official positions that are profitable for the incumbent, to the allocation of such positions, or to a system in which such allocation is prevalent.
- While in the cloth, all clerics, regardless of social origins, were members of privileged class, exempt from corvée and taxes and sharing the government’s prebendary benefices of land and conscript labor.1985, Norman Jacobs, The Korean Road to Modernization and Development, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 224
- Following Max Weber, I define the prebendary state as a regime where those who hold state power live off politics. In addition to their salaries, the rulers and officials of the state benefit from the perquisites of office, either in the form of bribes or outright appropriation of public monies...2007, Alex Dupuy, The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 28
Forms of prebendary
| plural | prebendaries |
|---|
Origin of prebendary
From Medieval Latin praebendārius, from Late Latin praebenda (“literally ‘things to be supplied’; prebend”), neuter plural of gerundive of praebeō (“supply”), from prae- (“pre-”) + habeō (“have, hold”).
Words formed from prebendary
Questions about prebendary
- What does prebendary mean?
- Prebendary means an honorary canon of a cathedral or collegiate church.
- What part of speech is prebendary?
- Prebendary can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce prebendary?
- Prebendary is pronounced /ˈpɹɛbəndəɹi/.
- What is the plural of prebendary?
- The plural of prebendary is prebendaries.
Words near prebendary in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: prebendary (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-prebendary.wav.
Cite this entry: “prebendary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prebendary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.