confraternity
Americannoun
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a lay brotherhood devoted to some purpose, especially to religious or charitable service.
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a society or organization, especially of men, united for some purpose or in some profession.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of confraternity
1425–75; late Middle English confraternite < Medieval Latin confrāternitās, derivative of confrāter ( see confrere), on the model of Latin frāternitās fraternity
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.
See Examples For:
And the King will take an honorary, spiritual title associated with the abbey, becoming what's called a "royal confrater", as part of the abbey's confraternity.
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2025
The subject was popular among artists during the Renaissance, and Carpaccio told the overwrought story in a sequence of nine large canvases designed for a confraternity building known as the Scuola di Sant Orsola.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 9, 2022
The personages in the rotunda’s artworks, revolutionary warriors and Founding Fathers, seemed to look down at the body in a spirit of confraternity.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 1, 2018
The band's hardcore fans, more used to the confraternity and real ale of the band's Gentlemen of the Road gigs, will find this step-up to be a mixed blessing.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 16, 2012
It is a testament to our confraternity, however, that a curious ground of agreement was eventually reached: the necessity of concealing all mourning at the smallpox burials, and displaying only dancing and festival triumph.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Ms. Rinaldi, the archaeologist, said it was possible that one of the confraternities also commissioned the painting.
From New York Times ● Jun. 12, 2022
Starting in the 14th century, two Christian confraternities — associations of laypeople — became affiliated with the Colosseum and began putting on representations of the Passion of Christ.
From New York Times ● Jun. 12, 2022
He described the present confraternities as "vile, evil groups".
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2020
Traipsing across Venice in search of Tintoretto clarified how thoroughly a Christian faith animated the formal invention of his greatest paintings, which I often found in obscure churches and cash-poor confraternities.
From New York Times ● Nov. 15, 2018
He was, too, very generous with his work—a great contrast in this respect to Titian—and contracts with convents and confraternities show that he often only stipulated for payment for bare time.
From The Venetian School of Painting by Phillipps, Evelyn March
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.
