excommunication

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English excommunicacioun,^[2][3] borrowed from Late Latin excommūnicātiō,^[4][5][2][6] and Barnhart allows that it may have come through Middle French excommunication, earlier escomination.^[7] The Latin noun is formed from the verb excommūnicō (“to put out of the community; in Church Latin, to expel from communion”).^[5][4] The OED analyses that verb as ex- (“out”) and commūnis (“common”) on the analogy of commūnicō (“to share, communicate”),^[4][7] while Etymonline and Merriam-Webster Unabridged take it as the prefix and the verb directly.^[5][2] The noun is also related to the English verb excommunicate, recorded probably before 1425.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The exclusion of an offender from the communion of the Church: 1459, in the Paston Letters, He fallith in the centense of excommunicacion.^[3][7] The OED's first quotation is from O. Bokenham's lives of saints, before 1460,^[4] and Etymonline dates the word to the mid-15th century.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The word entered English as a technical term of Church discipline, and has remained one.^[4][2] From 1702, in Clarendon's history, it could also mean the sentence itself,^[4] which the Shorter Oxford dates from the mid-17th century.^[8] Johnson (1755) defined it as an ecclesiastical interdict, with an example from Hooker explaining that it shuts a person out only from fellowship in holy duties.^[9] Webster (1828) distinguished the lesser kind, suspension from the eucharist, from the greater, absolute exclusion from the church.^[10] In England an excommunicated person also faced civil disabilities, such as being unable to serve as a juror or a witness.^[11] The OED records a transferred use outside religion from 1840, in T. Hood.^[4]

Timeline

• 1459 – exclusion from the communion of the Church.^[3][7]
• 1702 – the sentence of exclusion.^[4]
• 1840 – transferred, exclusion from a group outside the Church.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of excommunicating someone, or the state of being excommunicated.^[12][2][8]
2. A formal ecclesiastical censure that excludes a person from the communion or membership of a church: The bishop threatened the rebel priest with excommunication.^[12][2][11]
3. Exclusion from any fellowship or group.^[2][4]

Related words

• excommunicate
• communicate
• common
• communion

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ Webster, Noah (1828), An American Dictionary of the English Language, New York: S. Converse
11. ^ a b Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West
12. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt