Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To strip of priestly privileges and functions.
- v. To deprive of the right to practice a profession.
- v. To deprive of an honorary position.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Same as unfrock.
Wiktionary
- v. literally to divest of a frock
- v. figuratively to formally remove the rights and authority of a member of the clergy.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To divest of the frock, i. e. to deprive (a priest, minister, etc.) of official ecclesiastical authority; -- of church officials.
WordNet 3.0
- v. divest of the frock; of church officials
Etymologies
- de- + frock 'vestment' (Wiktionary)
Examples
“A senior Catholic Church official has threatened controversy by saying that it would be safer not to "defrock" priests who had been convicted of sexually abusing children.”
Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph
“Years of correspondence between Father Ronan's superiors discussing his alleged abuse of minors in Ireland were first sent as attachments to the Vatican in February 1966, Mr. Lena said, as part of a request from his religious order to defrock Father Ronan—a request that was granted weeks later.”
The Wall Street Journal: Vatican Releases Files in Bid to Rebut Claims of Coverup
“The Vatican began its crusade to defrock Father Bourgeois in November of 2008 with the threat of excommunication.”
The Huffington Post: Michele Somerville: A Frock Does Not A Priest Make
“Roy Bourgeois made the front page of this past Saturday's New York Times, and I was glad for the good news at hand: 157 priests signed a statement in support of Father Roy Bourgeois, whom the Vatican has begun to defrock.”
The Huffington Post: Michele Somerville: A Frock Does Not A Priest Make
“If they defrock him, they set him on a path to official or unofficial sainthood.”
“The church on Wednesday presented its highest-level official response yet to one of the most explosive recent revelations regarding sex abuse — a story the Times broke on the church's decision in the 1990s not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys.”
Holy Thursday: Pope washes feet, Vatican slams media amid scandal
“He added: Compare how long it takes to defrock paedophile priests with how secular organisations work.”
The Guardian: Pope's UK visit prompts increase in sex abuse allegations against church
“I hereby defrock the FF and restore the title to the Frua-bodied 1952 Ferrari 212.”
The Wall Street Journal: A Showroom of Regrets: What I Got Wrong in 2011
“The NYT had a story the other day about a priest accused of sexually molesting teenage girls here in the US who returned to his native India where the local bishop declined to defrock him.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Remarkable Window into Amnesty International’s Worldview
“Whelan, the archbishop of Wisconsin who urged the Vatican to defrock Martin, the priest who allegedly abused more than 200 boys at a Catholic school for the deaf over the years, was himself secretly engaged in a homosexual relationship (with a consenting adult!).”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Remarkable Window into Amnesty International’s Worldview
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘defrock’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
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End in -ock
Inspired by fbharjo (see spitchcock).
spitchcock, hillock, willock, peacock, pajock, penock, yapock, sycock, bittock, bawcock, burrock, cammock and 168 more...
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Undo
A list of terms that denote separating one thing from another, or deconstructing a thing into its parts or to a former state. E.g., untie, divorce, unscramble.
untie, divorce, unscramble, disunite, disjoin, undo, separate, disassemble, uncouple, unhitch, disassociate, disaffiliate and 185 more...
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Wordplayer's Wonderful Words
chaparral, grotesque, knork, newsmonger, thitherwards, fackeltanz, kakistocracy, sforzando, compendium, frump, inquere, phosphene and 100 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 2369 more... -
elvesoncrack's Words
lachrymose, blustering, fjord, chihuahua, chiffon, catalytic, stile, gefilte, prosh, thwart, ralph, ickle and 379 more...
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Dain's Words
rabble, terminus, archaic, atavism, demiurge, waylay, syzygy, jocoserious, quark, entropy, cinnabar, shamble and 912 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, D
dodecahedron, din, diglyceride, dysphotopsia, decoction, deboss, diatonic, dithyramb, divagate, discalced, dishdasha, daft and 281 more...
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Umbersorrow
Intangible, anthropic.
States of being are listed on oofy.njiju, glark, deplore, afterlithe, tagmass, spuriosity, forkful, chelation, oding, ploat, botnet, quedeship and 477 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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verbs
deprecate, behold, bemoan, circumscribe, circumspect, pivot, discombobulate, rummage, chasten, chastise, undulate, snog and 122 more...
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Annsley's list
churlish, bibulous, salt, salty, conjugal, fabulist, maw, primordial, chimera, emetic, surly, excrescence and 228 more...
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Valse's Words
fastidious, fervent, bellicose, personification, onomatopoeia, burly, concomitant, tempura, serendipity, pecuniary, foment, chum and 418 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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A Serving of Random Palavery
This is an eclectic and somewhat random list of words that catch and hold my attention. They may be archaic or disused, dialectal, jargon words from my fields of academic speciality (linguistics, ...
scraffle, infelicitous, misprize, defrock, caitiff, gimcrack, innerve, abjure, cyberchondriac, indurate, hexagynous, pistils and 146 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for defrock.
hernesheir (v): Literally, to remove the frock or vestments of church officials, and thus their authority. Dec 30, 2008