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Allin

abbot

nounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈabət//
  • Australia//ˈæbət//
  • New Zealand//ˈɛbət//

The superior or head of an abbey or monastery.

noun

  1. 1

    The superior or head of an abbey or monastery.

    The newly appointed abbot decided to take a tour of the abbey with the cardinal's emissary.

  2. 2

    The pastor or administrator of an order, including minor and major orders starting with the minor order of porter.

  3. 3

    A layman who received the abbey's revenues, after the closing of the monasteries.

  4. 4

    archaicA brothel-owner's husband or lover.

  5. 5

    archaicA ponce; a man employed by a prostitute to find clients, and who may also act as a bodyguard or equivalent to a bouncer.

Etymology

From Middle English abbot, abbod, abbed, from Old English abbat, abbad, abbod, from Latin abbās (“father”), from Ancient Greek ἀββᾶς (abbâs), from Aramaic אבא (’abbā, “father”). Doublet of abba, abbé, and bwana.

Forms

plural
abbots
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).