Word.ws English Dictionary

seraph

/ˈsɛɹəf/

seraph noun: a burning serpent, often winged, with human hands and sometimes feet; one of God's entourage. On Earth, they strike with burning poison; in Heaven, with burning coal.

seraph: a burning serpent, often winged, with human hands and sometimes feet; one of God's entourage. On...
Image: Limbourg brothers / Jacquemart de Hesdin / Jean Le Noir /, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

seraph (plural seraphs or seraphim or (nonstandard) seraphims)

  1. A burning serpent, often winged, with human hands and sometimes feet; one of God's entourage. On Earth, they strike with burning poison; in Heaven, with burning coal.
  2. (post-biblical) A six-winged angel; one of the highest choir or order of angels in Christian angelology, ranked above cherubim, and below God.
    • From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which came a voice, sweet as a seraph's1857 April 1, Herman Melville, chapter XXIII, in The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, New York, N.Y.: Dix, Edwards & Co., […], →OCLC
    • I don’t mean that,—I said,—you blessed little saint and seraph!—if there’s an angel missing in the New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this boarding house!1857–1858, Oliver Wendell Holmes [Sr.], “(please specify the page)”, in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson and Company, published 1858, →OCLC

seraph meaning in Hindi, Bengali, Telugu and Tagalog

seraph in Hindi

high order of angels
साराप sārāp

seraph in Bengali

উচ্চস্তরের স্বর্গদূত, দেবদূত

seraph in Telugu

high order of angels
సెరాపు serāpu

seraph in Tagalog

high order of angels
serapin
More languagesFewer languages
seraph in Arabic
سَرَافِيم sarāfīm

Synonyms of seraph

Forms of seraph

pluralseraphs
pluralseraphim
plural (nonstandard)seraphims
alternative form (rare)saraph
alternative form (nonstandard, archaic)seraphim

Origin of seraph

Back-formation of singular from plural seraphim, from Latin seraphim, from Biblical Hebrew שְׂרָפִים (sərāp̄īm), plural form of שָׂרָף (sārāp̄). The plural "seraphims" occurs in the King James Bible (Isaiah chapter 6). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the singular "seraph" may have originated with John Milton, who used it in Book I of Paradise Lost (1667).

Words formed from seraph

Questions about seraph

What does seraph mean?
Seraph means a burning serpent, often winged, with human hands and sometimes feet; one of God's entourage. On Earth, they strike with burning poison; in Heaven, with burning coal.
What is seraph in Hindi?
Seraph in Hindi is साराप (sārāp). See Seraph meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is seraph?
Seraph is a noun.
How do you pronounce seraph?
Seraph is pronounced /ˈsɛɹəf/.
What is the plural of seraph?
The plural of seraph is seraphs.

Words near seraph in the dictionary

  1. serapeia
  2. serapeion
  3. serapeium
  4. serapes
  5. serapeum
  6. seraph
  7. seraphic
  8. seraphical
  9. seraphicall
  10. seraphically
  11. seraphick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seraph (page history and authors); seraph (Bengali Wiktionary) (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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Cite this entry: “seraph.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/seraph. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.