Fw: Wordsmith (5/08/2025): A.Word.A.Day -- Autocephality

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The world's toughest language game.

May 8, 2025

This week’s theme
Words with all the vowels

This week’s words

Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

autocephality

PRONUNCIATION:

(ah-to-suh-FAL-i-tee)

MEANING:

noun: Self-rule.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek auto- (self) + -cephal (head).

NOTES:

Autocephality is a fancy word for self-governance. It’s especially used in the context of Eastern Orthodox Churches that independently govern their spiritual affairs without a higher ecclesiastical authority. Think of it as running their own spiritual show. No higher-ups pulling the incense strings.
Not to be confused with autocephalopods. Those would be self-governing squids.

USAGE:

“Autocephality in Bulgaria and the rest of the Balkans made the churches a tool for nationalist propaganda and war in the nineteenth century.”
Alex Moldovan ; The Orthodox Church and a Very Balkan Affair; OpenDemocracy (London, UK); Nov 5, 2018.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. -Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (8 May 1884-1972)

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Fw: Wordsmith (5/08/2025): A.Word.A.Day -- Autocephality

autocephality