Dictionaries › English

primate

Pronunciation: /ˈpɹaɪmeɪt/

The English word “primate” has 5 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A mammal of the order Primates, comprising of apes (including humans), monkeys, lemurs, tarsiers, lorisids, and galagos.
  2. An anthropoid; ape including human.
  3. In the Catholic Church, a rare title conferred to or claimed by the sees of certain archbishops, or the highest-ranking bishop of a present or historical, usually political circumscription.
  4. In the Orthodox Church, the presiding bishop of an ecclesiastical jurisdiction or region. Usually, the expression primate refers to the first hierarch of an autocephalous or autonomous Orthodox church. Less often, it is used to refer to the ruling bishop of an archdiocese or diocese.
  5. In the Anglican Church, an archbishop, or the highest-ranking bishop of an ecclesiastic province.

Etymology

First attested in 1876. From French primate, from the substantivization of Latin prīmās, prīmātis (“one of the first, chief, excellent, noble”), same as Etymology 2. So named due to the belief that primates are the highest order of mammals or animals.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “primate” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.