Episcopal

How to spell episcopal

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce episcopal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does episcopal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a bishop or to church government by bishops.

Episcopal in a sentence

• The cathedral falls under episcopal authority rather than local control.

• The diocese follows an episcopal system of leadership.

Where does episcopal come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches English through Latin episcopalis, an adjective meaning 'of or belonging to a bishop'. That Latin form was built on episcopus, the word for a bishop, which Latin itself had taken from the Greek episkopos, literally 'one who watches over' or 'overseer', from epi meaning 'over' and skopos meaning 'a watcher' or 'one who looks'. The early Christian church adopted the Greek word for the leader who supervised a congregation, and the literal sense of an overseer faded into the formal title of bishop. The very same episcopus root, worn down over centuries of spoken use, also gives us the everyday word 'bishop' itself, which is why the spelling with its tidy Greek 'scop' looks so different from its plain English cousin. English began using episcopal in the 1400s for anything governed by or relating to bishops, and the skopos element survives elsewhere in words like 'telescope' and 'microscope', a useful clue that the tricky middle is spelled scop, not skop.

How the word is built

• epi- (over, upon)
• scop (from Greek skopos: watcher, looker)
• -al (adjective suffix)