parish

Meanings

Noun

• In the Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and Roman Catholic Church, an administrative part of a diocese that has its own church.
• The community attending that church; the members of the parish.
• An ecclesiastical society, usually not bounded by territorial limits, but composed of those persons who choose to unite under the charge of a particular priest, clergyman, or minister; also, loosely, the territory in which the members of a congregation live.
• A civil subdivision of a British county, often corresponding to an earlier ecclesiastical parish.
• An administrative subdivision in the U.S. state of Louisiana that is equivalent to a county in other U.S. states.

Verb

• To place (an area, or rarely a person) into one or more parishes.
• To visit residents of a parish.
• Pronunciation spelling of perish

Origin

• From Middle English parisshe, from Old French paroisse (compare the obsolete variant paroch, from Anglo-Norman paroche, parosse), from Late Latin parochia, from Ancient Greek παροικία.