''catholic'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260714000159-00-⌔

catholic - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

catholic (comparative more catholic, superlative most catholic)

• Universal; all-encompassing.
  • ✤ Synonyms: universal; see also Thesaurus: generic, Thesaurus: comprehensive
  • ✤ The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.¹
  • ✤ Essentially, and in idea, the empire, in the minds of the Romans, was world-wide. This conception descended to the Church, which was ‘ Catholic ’ in spite of Buddhists, Confucians, and (later) Muhammadans.²
  • ✤ Newton Heath depot has lately been catholic in its choice of power for the 6.10 p.m. Manchester-Southport and the 9 p.m. back via Bolton.³
  • ✤ This semifossorial mammal tends to reside in areas with herbaceous cover, frequenting runways in the upper soil horizons where it feeds on a highly catholic diet of animal and plant materials […]⁴
• Alternative letter-case form of Catholic.
• (obsolete) Common or prevalent; especially universally prevalent.
• (usually of people and their feelings, tastes, etc.) All-embracing.
  • ✤ Synonyms: eclectic, varied; liberal, open-minded; see also Thesaurus: heterogeneous, Thesaurus: permissive
  • ✤ […] a knowledge which should not only know at what particular spot in these mounds it should excavate, but, having excavated, would understand how to sift and use these materials properly, with a profoundly pious and reverential mind,—a knowledge not narrow, sectarian, one-sided, but catholic, human, large, one to which Homer and Horace and Goethe and Tennyson should no be more foreign than Church Fathers, and archæologists, palæographers and antiquaries […]⁵
  • ✤ A catholic mind is a continual source of pleasure, a catholic taste continually enjoys it. Narrow-mindedness is a curse wherever it exists, whether in the religions, scientific, literary, or aesthetic sphere, or in the world of social intercourse; whether it dwindles religion into a dogma, or science into a formula, or literature into a style, or art into a school, or morality into a maxim.⁶
  • ✤ “I’ve got catholic tastes. Catholic with a small”c”, of course.”⁷
  • ✤ He was omnivorous in his appetite for knowledge, quite catholic in his range of interests […]⁸
• (of medicines or remedies, obsolete) Universally applicable.
• Of universal human interest or use.
  • ✤ And as the whole booke of Psalmes is Oleum efjusum, (as the Spouse speaks of the name of Christ) an Oyntment powred out upon all sorts of sores, A Searcloth that souples all bruises, A Balme that searches all wounds; so are there some certaine Psalmes, that are Imperiall Psalmes, that command over all affections, and spread themselves over all occasions, Catholique, universall Psalmes, that apply themselves to all necessities.⁹
  • ✤ And this vast number is but a selection; the editors chose only out of the mass before them what was most noteworthy and trustworthy, and what was of catholic rather than of national interest.¹⁰

Etymology

From Old French catholique, from Latin catholicus, from Ancient Greek καθολικός (katholikós, “universal”), from κατά (katá, “according to”) + ὅλος (hólos, “whole”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /ˈkæ.θ(ə.)lɪk/, /ˈkɑː.θ(ə.)lɪk/
  • Audio (UK): 🔊
• (General American) IPA: /ˈkæ.θ(ə.)lɪk/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -æθəlɪk, -æθlɪk
• Hyphenation: ca‧tho‧lic, ca‧tholic

Printed 2026-07-14.

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Footnotes

1. 1624, John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII., in The Works of John Donne, vol. 3, ed. Henry Alford, London: John W. Parker (1839), pp. 574-5: ↩

2. 1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, I.29: ↩

3. 1961 March, “Motive Power Miscellany”, in Trains Illustrated, page 181: ↩

4. 1995, Brian D. Crandall & Peter W. Stahl, Human Digestive Effects on a Micromammalian Skeleton, Journal of Archaeological Science (1995) 22, 789-797: ↩

5. 1874, Immanuel Oscar Menahem Deutsch, “Les Apôtres”, in Emily Ann Smythe, Viscountess Strangford, editor, Literary Remains of the Late Emanuel Deutsch, London: John Murray, page 201: ↩

6. 1896 May, Henry A. Reed, “Art. IV.—Catholicity”, in Methodist Review, page 377: ↩

7. 1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 584: ↩

8. 2003, Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything; The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, New York: Oxford University Press, page 72: ↩

9. c. 1625, John Donne, edited by Evelyn M. Simpson and George R. Potter, The Sermons of John Donne ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume 7, Berkeley: University of California Press, published 1962, page 51: ↩

10. 1868, James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects ‎${}^{[2]}$, 3rd edition, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., page 363: ↩