bishop
/ˈbɪʃəp
/noun
1A senior member of the Christian clergy, usually in charge of a diocese and empowered to confer holy orders.The spiritual peerage consists of the archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Church of England....
- The brothers' father was also an Anglican bishop of Low Church or Evangelical faith.
- The understanding of the role of the bishop in a diocese involves seeing the bishop as representing Jesus Christ among the priests and people of his diocese.
Synonyms
prelate, diocesan, metropolitan, suffragan, coadjutor;
Orthodox Church exarch
2 (also bishop bird) An African weaver bird, the male of which has red, orange, yellow, or black plumage.
- Genus Euplectes, family Ploceidae: several species, including the red bishop (E. orix), which has scarlet plumage with a black face and underparts.
- I believe the bird upper right in the above photo is an Orange Bishop (Euplectes franciscanus).
- The cuckoo was taken from the nest of a red bishop bird.
3A chess piece, typically with its top shaped like a mitre, that can move in any direction along a diagonal on which it stands. Each player starts the game with two bishops, one moving on white squares and the other on black.Every chess bishop moves on a diagonal, and none of those on black squares ever move to white squares (in the same game)....
- Black simply sacrifices one of the bishops for White's remaining pawn.
- But this resulted in the immediate loss of a piece as Adams took a pawn with his bishop attacking the black queen.
4 [mass noun] Mulled and spiced wine.Glogg, gluhwein, poker beer, bishop, toddy, hot punch, flip, rumfustian, and wassail are all of the warmed spirit family....
- The 2005 Glaetzer Bishop is dense plum/purple in colour, with crushed black pepper, liquorice and anise on the nose.
- It is sometimes called purple wine and received the name bishop from its colour.
Origin
Old English biscop, bisceop, based on Greek episkopos 'overseer', from epi 'above' + -skopos '-looking'.
The meaning of Old English biscop is literally ‘overseer’, from Greek episkopos, formed from epi ‘above’ and -skopos ‘-looking’.