Diocese

How to spell diocese

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce diocese

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diocese mean?

1. nounA district or group of churches under the pastoral care of a bishop.

Diocese in a sentence

• The bishop oversees every parish within the diocese.

• Funds for the new school were raised across the entire diocese.

Where does diocese come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word travels back to the Greek dioikesis, which meant 'administration' or 'management', and originally referred to the running of a household or estate. It was built from the verb dioikein, 'to keep house, to manage', formed from dia- meaning 'thoroughly' and oikein 'to inhabit or manage', which in turn comes from oikos, the Greek word for 'house' (the same root that gives us 'economy' and 'ecology'). Under the Roman Empire the term was borrowed into Latin as dioecesis and used for an administrative district governed by an official. As the early Church adopted Roman administrative structures, the word came to mean the territory under the spiritual care of a bishop, and it entered English through Old French in the 1300s. The quietly tricky spelling, the unstressed middle and the soft -cese ending sounding like 'sis', is a direct legacy of its Greek-into-Latin-into-French journey.

How the word is built

• dia- (thoroughly)
• oikos (Greek 'house')
• -esis (action/state noun), giving 'administration of a household'