Catholic

How to spell catholic

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce catholic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does catholic mean?

1. adjectiveBroad and all-embracing in interests, tastes, or sympathies.
2. adjectiveRelating to the universal Christian church, or specifically to the Roman Catholic Church.

Catholic in a sentence

• Her reading habits are remarkably catholic, spanning poetry, science, and crime fiction.

• She was raised in a catholic household and attended Mass every Sunday.

• The gallery owner had a catholic taste in art that welcomed every era and style.

• The family enrolled their children in the local catholic school.

Where does catholic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek katholikos, which meant 'universal' or 'general'. It was built from the phrase kata holou, where kata means 'according to' or 'throughout' and holos means 'whole', so the literal sense was 'on the whole' or 'concerning the whole'. Latin borrowed it as catholicus, and early Christian writers used it to describe the universal church that embraced all believers, which is how the religious sense developed. English took the word in during the 1300s, keeping both the broad meaning of 'wide-ranging and all-embracing' and the narrower church label. The same Greek holos 'whole' survives in everyday words like 'holistic' and 'hologram', a useful reminder that catholic spells the 'hol' sound with the letters t-h-o-l, not a simple silent letter.

How the word is built

• cat- (from Greek kata: according to, throughout)
• hol (from holos: whole)
• -ic (adjective suffix)