Anglican

How to spell anglican

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce anglican

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does anglican mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the Church of England or the wider communion of churches descended from it.
2. nounA member of the Church of England or of a church in the same worldwide communion.

Anglican in a sentence

• adjective

  The couple were married in an anglican church near the village green.

• noun

  As a lifelong anglican, he attended the cathedral service every Sunday.

• adjective

  She trained for the anglican priesthood at a college in Oxford.

• noun

  Many an anglican in the colony kept ties to the bishop back in London.

Where does anglican come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Medieval Latin Anglicanus, meaning 'English' or 'of the English Church', which was built on the Latin Anglicus, the adjective formed from Angli, the name of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic peoples who settled in Britain after the Roman period, and their name also gave us the very word 'England', literally the land of the Angles. The Latin phrase ecclesia anglicana, 'the English Church', appears in church documents long before the Reformation, but the term took on its modern, distinctive meaning in the 1500s and 1600s once the Church of England separated from Rome. English speakers adopted 'Anglican' as a settled label during the seventeenth century to describe that church and its worldwide communion. Because the spelling keeps the original Latin single 'l' and single 'c', writers who expect a doubled consonant can stumble, so it helps to remember the buried word 'Angle' inside it.

How the word is built

• angl- (from Latin Angli, the Angles, hence English)
• -ican (adjective and noun suffix)