church roll
- noun
:
lista de miembros
- Many families are listed on the church roll as active members.
Examples
-
Hundreds of members were added to the church rolls.
Academic text (2003) -
Your name is just on a church roll.
Blog text (6) -
The pastor reviewed the church roll to see who had attended the service last week.
-
Before joining the community, she ensured her name was added to the church roll.
Synonyms
122
3.2
An official list of names kept for record
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a list of the members belonging to a particular church' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'church' (the congregation/members) with 'roll' (a roster/list). This noun+noun compositional pattern is common and cross-linguistically regular, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The noun church roll comes from the old practice of keeping a long roll of paper in the church with people's names written on it. If your name was on that roll you were on the 'list' of 'members', so today church roll means the 'list' of church members.