pontifex
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pontifex
1570–80; < Latin: apparently literally, path-maker, equivalent to ponti- (stem of pōns ) bridge, probably originally, path ( see pons) + -fec- (combining form of facere to make) + -s nominative singular ending; the literal application is unclear
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:
The new pontifex maximus has much work ahead of him to wrangle the faithful into unity.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 10, 2025
If he sometimes sounds like a pontifex maximus, he generally talks neither down nor with false humility.
From Time Magazine Archive
These members begin to be found holding also civil magistracies, and the pontifex maximus was often a consul of the year.
From The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus by Fowler, W. Warde
Do I err, saying this? or did that most illustrious man, Publius Scipio, pontifex maximus, when in no magisterial office, take off Tiberius Gracchus, for merely disturbing the established order of the state?
From The Roman Traitor, Vol. 2 by Herbert, Henry William
Again, the master of ceremonies at papal mass prompts the pontiff at each stage of the function as did his predecessors for Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius when they too officiated as pontifex maximus.
From Rome by Malleson, Hope
By this means he persuaded the pontifices to give back to him the foundation as properly his and unconsecrated.
From Dio's Rome, Volume 2 An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus; and Now Presented in English Form. Second Volume Extant Books 36-44 (B.C. 69-44). by Foster, Herbert Baldwin
I will finish this lecture by illustrating briefly this renewed and extended activity of the pontifices, so far as we can dimly trace it in this third century B.C.
From The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus by Fowler, W. Warde
Besides decreeing, no doubt with the sanction of the pontifices, certain ordinary measures, the Senate referred the matter to the decemviri and the Sibylline 318books.
From The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus by Fowler, W. Warde
Of the di indigetes of an earlier period he could hardly know more than we do ourselves; his only sources of information were the facts of the cult and the books of the pontifices.
From The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus by Fowler, W. Warde
We may thus be quite certain, that though they had lost their old monopoly of religious knowledge, the pontifices found plenty of fresh work to do in this period.
From The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus by Fowler, W. Warde
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.
