Abbott

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The monk who governs an abbey and oversees its community ; a religious man who serves as the leader of a monastic house
2. The senior member of a monastic community who directs an abbey ; a cleric who presides over a monastery and its brothers
3. A religious superior heading an abbey or monastery ; a male monastic who rules over the members of his religious house

Etymology: "Abbott" began as a surname before it was ever a common noun for a monastery's head. It was an occupational name for someone who worked for an abbot, the head of a monastic community, in much the way "Smith" marks a metalworker. The same name turns up among families who were not English at all: in the United States it is sometimes an anglicization of the Italian "Abate", the Spanish "Abad", or the German "Abt", all meaning abbot. That shared ancestry makes "abbot" and "abbad" a doublet, two English-facing forms of one word. Both descend from the Late Latin "abbas", which came from Aramaic "abba", meaning "father". The title thus carries a family term into the language of religious authority, and the surname preserves that link in a different guise.

Synonyms: prior, superior