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• pope
  pope

  noun

  the bishop of Rome as head of the Roman Catholic Church.
• Pope
  Pope

  noun

  Alexander, 1688–1744, English poet.
• Popé
  Popé

  noun

  died 1690?, Pueblo medicine man: led rebellion against the Spanish 1680.

pope

¹ American  

[pohp] / poʊp /

noun

• popes
  plural

1. (often initial capital letter) the bishop of Rome as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

2. (in the early Christian church) a bishop.

3. a person considered as having or assuming authority or a position similar to that of the Roman Catholic pope.

4. the title of the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria.

5. Eastern Church.

   1. the Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria.

   2. (in certain churches) a parish priest.

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Pope ² American  

[pohp] / poʊp /

noun

1. Alexander, 1688–1744, English poet.

2. John, 1822–92, Union general in the U.S. Civil War.

3. John Russell, 1874–1937, U.S. architect.

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Popé ³ American  

[poh-pay] / poʊˈpeɪ /

noun

1. died 1690?, Pueblo medicine man: led rebellion against the Spanish 1680.

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Pope ¹ British  

/ pəʊp /

noun

1. Alexander. 1688–1744, English poet, regarded as the most brilliant satirist of the Augustan period, esp with his Imitations of Horace (1733–38). His technical virtuosity is most evident in The Rape of the Lock (1712–14). Other works include The Dunciad (1728; 1742), the Moral Essays (1731–35), and An Essay on Man (1733–34)

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pope ² British  

/ pəʊp /

noun

1. another name for ruffe

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pope ³ British  

/ pəʊp /

noun

1. (often capital) the bishop of Rome as head of the Roman Catholic Church

2. Eastern Orthodox Church

   1. a title sometimes given to a parish priest

   2. a title sometimes given to the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria

3. a person assuming or having a status or authority resembling that of a pope

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pope Cultural  

1. The head of the Roman Catholic Church. The pope is believed by his church to be the successor to the Apostle Peter. He is bishop of Rome and lives in a tiny nation within Rome called the Vatican. Catholics believe that when the pope speaks officially on matters of faith and morals, he speaks infallibly (see papal infallibility). (See also John XXIII and John Paul II.)

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• popeless
  adjective
• popelike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• popes
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of pope

before 900; Middle English; Old English pāpa < Late Latin: bishop, pope < Late Greek pápas bishop, priest, variant of páppas father; see papa

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Explanation

A pope is the head of the Catholic Church. The official title of a pope is the bishop of Rome. When you refer to a specific pope, the word is capitalized, as in Pope Francis. Each pope is considered to be a successor to the Biblical apostle Saint Peter, and each is elected by a group of Catholic cardinals to be the highest religious authority. Pope is from the Old English papa and derives from the Greek papas, which means "patriarch, bishop, or father."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pope Pope Popé popes

It was the second time Dylan had met a pope.

From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2026

"Thank God the new pope has also had a connection with Latin America!"

From Barron's ● Nov. 4, 2026

The last pope to visit Argentina was John Paul II in 1987.

From Barron's ● Nov. 4, 2026

Leo, the first US pope, quoted a Bob Dylan lyric in the preface to a book about disarmament published earlier this year, according to Vatican News.

From Barron's ● Nov. 4, 2026

If I was the pope I'd've made Mrs. de Roo a saint.

From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell

In 1997 Dylan was invited to perform in front of Pope John Paul II and about 300,000 young people for the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna.

From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2026

At the entrance to Buenos Aires Cathedral, where the late Pope Francis served as archbishop for 15 years, a TV screen shows images of him kissing the feet of the faithful.

From Barron's ● Nov. 4, 2026

A luckless Peruvian town that has for centuries been dismissed as cursed is hoping for a new lease on life when Pope Leo visits this month.

From Barron's ● Nov. 3, 2026

Pope Leo XIV has weighed in on the moral pitfalls of seeing AI products as sentient, as my colleague Nilesh Christopher reports.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2026

I was staring fixedly at the wall, right below the framed photo of the Pope, which had a signature scrawled underneath.

From "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

So Popé sent long-distance runners hundreds of miles to Pueblos around the province with knotted cords of what is thought to be yucca or perhaps strips of deer hide.

From New York Times ● Sep. 27, 2020

Pueblo Indians mounted one rebellion after another, as did Indigenous peoples elsewhere in Spanish-occupied lands, but it took a visionary shaman named Popé to orchestrate the mother of all revolts.

From New York Times ● Sep. 27, 2020

One of these, a young man named Popé, struck back by organizing a rebellion in the summer of 1680, soon after Bacon’s Rebellion and Metacom’s War in the far-distant English colonies.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018

Pueblo leader Popé demanded a return to native ways so the hardships his people faced would end.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014

Thirty-four Pueblo towns were in the revolt, under the lead of a dangerous Tehua Indian named Popé.

From The Spanish Pioneers by Charles F. Lummis

Rome's Gemelli hospital, north of the Vatican, is where popes are usually treated.

From Barron's ● Oct. 12, 2026

Francis spent weeks at Rome's Gemelli hospital, where popes traditionally go for medical treatment.

From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2026

I thought about all those who had denounced the popes and the church they headed before him: the sans culottes, the guillotinists, the tricoteuses; all the rationalists, the Marxists, the humanists.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026

The evidence suggests King Harold may have weakened his position well before the Battle of Hastings by supporting the wrong faction during a bitter conflict between two competing popes.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026

Then Alexander VI came to power, and he, more than any of the popes who ever reigned, demonstrated how well a pope could succeed with money and his own troops.

From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli

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