presbyter
Americannoun
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(in the early Christian church) an office bearer who exercised teaching, priestly, and administrative functions.
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(in hierarchical churches) a priest.
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an elder in a Presbyterian church.
noun
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an elder of a congregation in the early Christian Church
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(in some Churches having episcopal politics) an official who is subordinate to a bishop and has administrative, teaching, and sacerdotal functions
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(in some hierarchical Churches) another name for priest
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a teaching elder
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a ruling elder
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Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of presbyter
1590–1600; < Late Latin, noun use of the adj.: older < Greek presbýteros, equivalent to présby ( s ) old + -teros comparative suffix
Vocabulary lists containing presbyter
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“When Mona asked … for just about everybody in the Presbyterian, it was an instantaneous recognition of how much sense this made,” said Wendy Tajima, executive presbyter, or spiritual leader, of the church.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2025
Bishops as well as district and parish committees will have to approve any parish's choice for a new minister, or "presbyter," as he will be called.
From Time Magazine Archive
Pastor Yakov Dukhonchenko is Ukrainian senior presbyter for the government-recognized All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, those Soviet Protestants who have chosen to accept state regulation.
From Time Magazine Archive
Alexandria, like all of Christendom, was then rent by the soft doctrine of the presbyter Arius, who argued that Jesus Christ was a good man, not God; that truth is reason, not mystery.
From Time Magazine Archive
We are informed in a Coptic colophon at the end, that the Book was edited by “Henry Tattam the presbyter of the Anglican Church for the Holy Patriarch and the Church of Christ in Egypt.”
From A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. II. by Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
