- 1女祭司（多用於非基督教的宗教；基督教的女性聖職通常仍稱 priest，不稱 priestess）
A priestess is a woman with a religious job: she serves a god or goddess, leads rites, and stands between people and what they hold holy. In English this word is used mainly for religions outside ordinary Christianity — the old Greek and Roman temples, Egypt, some pagan or Wiccan groups today, and some other traditions. In those worlds, priestess is a real title, not a costume word. Though actually, when a Christian church has a woman in the same role as a male priest, English speakers usually still call her a priest, not a priestess. Priestess can sound ancient, mystical, or 'from another kind of religion', and some women clergy do not like it for that reason. The ending -ess marks the person as female, in the old pattern of actor / actress, though that pattern is in many jobs.
組成From priest + -ess (an ending that marks a woman). There was already a similar word in Middle English, preesteresse.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
priestessnoun/ˈpriːstɛs/
- 1
A woman with religious duties and responsibilities in certain religions.
- Sir Knight, said she (whose looks, language, and gesture create strange thoughts within me) be pleased to know, that I am (I will not say the first) of those Ladies of Honour, who wait upon the high-born, illustrious, and refulgent Maulkina, Daughter to the high and mighty Prince Paraclet, Prince of No-Land, on the confines of whose Territories we now are, so it is that the Divine Maulkina having been a vowed Votaress to Diana (whose Priestess she was, and whose Oracles she exhibited) upon a night as she sat at the feet of the Image of that chaste Deity […]
- Among the Northern tribes also the woman was held in all moral aspects the equal of man. Alike the blue-eyed wife of the Barbarian and the proud Roman matron were, as the bearers and breeders of the race, the equals of the fighters and rulers of the race. The importance of their functions was fully recognized and respected, and the priestess at the sylvan altar, the vestals serving the fires and the temples at Rome were held worthy to speak face to face with the gods and convey their blessings to man.
- 2
slurA female Christian priest or minister, typically in a Protestant, Old Catholic, or independent Catholic denomination.
- The “extenuating circumstances” set forth by the Rev. Mr. Higgins certainly bring home not only the nature of Bishop Hall's problem but its cause; however, the problems of parish life under a deaconess are insignificant in comparison with the very grave issues raised by the ordination of a priestess.
- He has cleverly figured out that the deluded pro-priestess faction of the church already has its necessary two-thirds majority and that the time to act is now.
- 3
obsoleteA priest’s wife.
- As ſoon as they were parted, the Prieſteſs flounced out of the Houſe, call'd for her Coachman, and bid him put in his Horſes, for away would ſhe go […]
priestessverb/ˈpriːstɛs/
- 1
To oversee (a pagan ceremony, etc.) as priestess.
- Ye Ye Ife, a gifted feminist ritualist and priestess of Oshun from San Diego, trained in the Yoruba tradition, designed and priestessed the ritual with me.
- Priestessing the earth is for me personally the only natural response to the awe and deep love this evokes in me.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。