Meaning & use
Protestant
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Meanings
nouncountablereligion
A member of any of the Christian churches that grew out of the sixteenth-century break from the Roman Catholic Church.
Grammar: Always capitalized: a Protestant, many Protestants.
Patterns
- a Protestant church
- Protestants and Catholics
Her father was a Protestant, and her mother was Catholic.
Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists are all Protestants.
The town's Protestants held a joint service on Sunday.
adjectivebefore a nounreligion
Relating to Protestant churches, beliefs, or people.
Grammar: Capitalized and used before a noun: Protestant tradition.
Patterns
- a Protestant minister
The village has a small Protestant church near the square.
The Protestant Reformation began in the early sixteenth century.
He grew up in a Protestant family in the north of Ireland.
Word forms
| plural | Protestants |
|---|
Common combinations
- Protestant church
- The Protestant church on the corner dates from 1850.
- Protestant Reformation
- The Protestant Reformation changed the religious map of Europe.
- Protestant work ethic
- The phrase Protestant work ethic links hard work with moral virtue.
- Protestant minister
- A Protestant minister led the funeral.
- Catholic and Protestant
- The two communities, Catholic and Protestant, shared the cemetery.
Synonyms and how they differ
- Reformed
- Reformed names one branch of Protestantism with a Calvinist root, while Protestant covers all of them.
- Evangelical
- Evangelical points to a style of faith stressing personal conversion, and not every Protestant is one.
- Christian
- Christian is much broader, including Catholics and Orthodox believers as well as Protestants.
Opposites
Word family
- Protestantism noun
- the beliefs and practices of Protestant churches
- protest verb
- to object strongly; the root of the name
- protestation noun
- a firm declaration or objection
Commonly confused: Protestant or protester?
Protestant vs protester
A protester is someone taking part in a public protest, with no necessary link to religion.
Practice
Which group is a Protestant church?
Choose one answer.
Lutheran churches began in the Reformation, so they are Protestant. Roman Catholic and Orthodox are other Christian traditions, and Jewish is not Christian.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “Protestant”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.