Patriarch

How to spell patriarch

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce patriarch

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does patriarch mean?

1. nounA man who is the respected head or eldest male of a family, tribe, or group.
2. nounA senior bishop in certain Christian churches, such as the Eastern Orthodox or Coptic traditions.

Patriarch in a sentence

• The family patriarch presided over every holiday dinner from the head of the table.

• The Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople led the service in the ancient cathedral.

• As the company patriarch, he had founded the firm and still guided its biggest decisions.

• Pilgrims travelled to receive a blessing from the Coptic patriarch.

Where does patriarch come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek patriarches, which combined patria, meaning 'family' or 'lineage' (itself rooted in pater, 'father'), with archein, 'to rule or lead'. The literal sense was therefore 'the ruling father of a family or clan'. It passed into Latin as patriarcha and then into Old French before reaching English in the 1100s, arriving first in religious contexts to describe the revered fathers of the Hebrew Bible such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the senior bishops of the early Christian church. The same Greek -arch element ('ruler') survives in everyday words like monarch and anarchy, and remembering that connection is the key to the spelling: it ends in the hard -arch of a ruler, not in a plain -ark. Over time the word broadened to mean any venerable male head of a family or founding figure of a movement.

How the word is built

• patri- (father)
• -arch (ruler, chief)