Etymology

deacon

dea·con
D2E1A1C3O1N1

Today it means: A designated minister of charity in the early Church (see Acts 6:1-6). Full definition →

Middle English deken ← Old English diacon ← Ecclesiastical Latin diāconus
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

deacon · noun, verb1

  1. Ancient Greek · derived fromδιᾱ́κονος“servant, minister”
  2. Ecclesiastical Latin · derived fromdiāconus
  3. Old English · inherited fromdiacon
  4. Middle English · inherited fromdeken
  5. English todaydeacon

Inherited from Middle English deken, dekne, from Old English diacon, from Ecclesiastical Latin diāconus, from Ancient Greek διᾱ́κονος (diā́konos, “servant, minister”).

Deacon · proper noun2

* English occupational surname for someone working in the household of a deacon. * Also as an English surname, variant of Dicken. * As an Irish surname, from Ó Deocáin, "descendant of Deocán."

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.