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''crosier'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''crosier'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔

crosier - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

crosier (plural crosiers)

  • A staff with a hooked end similar to a shepherd’s crook, or with a cross at the end, carried by an abbot, bishop, or archbishop as a symbol of office.
    • ✤ […] the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword.1
    • ✤ “Nay, most gracious sovereign,” answered the Hermit, (well known to the curious in penny-histories of Robin Hood, by the name of Friar Tuck,) “it is not the crosier I fear, but the sceptre. […]”2
    • ✤ […] the plastic tube hanging from his nose was attached to an upturned bottle on a tall stand on wheels that he pushed along beside him like a bishop pushing his crosier.3
  • (botany) A young fern frond, before it has unrolled.
    • ✤ Synonym: fiddlehead

Etymology

From Middle English; originally referring to the staff bearer, from a merger of Old French words crocier (“bearer of a cross”) and croisier (“one who bears or has to do with a cross”), ultimately from Latin crux (“cross”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkɹəʊzi.ə/, /ˈkɹəʊʒə/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (US) enPR: krōʹzhər IPA: /ˈkɹoʊʒɚ/
  • Rhymes: (Received Pronunciation) -əʊʒə

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1788, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume V, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1996 [1992], chapter 33, in Paul Vincent, transl., The Discovery of Heaven, translation of original by Harry Mulisch: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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