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Glite Dictionary
antipope

antipope

1 9.9
A person who claims to be pope while another pope is accepted
  • noun
  • /ˈæntiˌpoʊp/
: antipapa
  • During the schism, multiple factions elected their own antipope to challenge the reigning pope's authority.

Examples

  • In the 3rd century, St. Hippolytus was recognized as an antipope after opposing the legitimate pope.

  • I signed in using Google Groups (I signed up for that only because of the storm problems on antipope).

    Blog text (31)

  • St. Hippolytus, 3rd Century: Antipope

    Blog text (14)

  • They include an antipope, a saint who rode the devil like a donkey, and cultish charismatics who dressed like harlots.

    Blog text (14)

  • The history books detail various instances of an antipope arising during times of political conflict within the church.

Antonyms

Pope
  • Formal
318 3.2

A religious leader in Rome who leads the Roman Catholic Church worldwide

Surface Forms

antipope singular
antipopes plural

Morphology

antipope = pope (transparent) = anti + pope

This is a standard prefixation with anti- meaning opposed to, so the meaning is directly recoverable from pope plus anti-.

Etymology

Antipope comes from anti- meaning 'against' and pope, the head of the Christian church. So an antipope is literally someone set 'against' the pope, a rival who claims the office and opposes the official pope.