prebendary

1 9.9

A senior church priest at a cathedral who receives money for their duties

noun
/ˈprɛbənˌdɛri/

Specialized

: prebendado

Reverend Angela Berners-Wilson was one of the first women to be ordained as a Church of England priest in 1994 and is now chaplain at the University of Bath and prebendary at Wells Cathedral.

Examples

Reverend Angela Berners-Wilson is a prebendary at Wells Cathedral, providing spiritual guidance to the congregation.
In contemporary China, however, local officials enjoy prebendary rights on a more strictly contingent basis.

Academic text (2014)
In the latter cases, so long as benefice holders pledged their fealty to the center and regularly remitted assigned tax quotas, their prebendary rights remained intact.

Academic text (2014)
The prebendary position includes responsibilities such as leading services and participating in church governance.
As a prebendary, he receives a stipend for his contributions to the cathedral community.

Surface Forms

prebendary singular

prebendaries plural

Morphology

prebendary = prebend (transparent) = prebend + ary

The noun denotes someone who holds or receives a 'prebend' and is formed by adding the agent/relational suffix '-ary'.

Etymology

Prebendary comes from Medieval Latin praebenda, meaning 'that which is given', from the Latin praebere 'to give'. A prebendary was therefore a church member who received a regular payment called a prebend, so today the word means a clergy person who gets a payment for their church duties.