ECCLESIASTICAL LAW

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does ecclesiastical law mean? 

• ECCLESIASTICAL LAW (noun)
  The noun ECCLESIASTICAL LAW has 1 sense:

1. the body of codified laws governing the affairs of a Christian church

  Familiarity information: ECCLESIASTICAL LAW used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ECCLESIASTICAL LAW (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The body of codified laws governing the affairs of a Christian church

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

canon law; ecclesiastical law

Hypernyms ("ecclesiastical law" is a kind of...):

jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)

Domain member category:

diriment impediment ((canon law) an impediment that invalidates a marriage (such as the existence of a prior marriage))

 Context examples 

He said, Look at the world, there was good and evil in that; look at the ecclesiastical law, there was good and evil in THAT.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It's a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)