benefice

Other forms of benefice

plural

benefices·

past tense

beneficed·

present participle

beneficing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about benefice

What does benefice mean?

benefice means "an endowed church office giving income to its holder". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in benefice?

benefice has 3 syllables: be-ne-fice. The stress falls on "be".

What is another word for benefice?

Close synonyms include ecclesiastical benefice. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is benefice a common word?

benefice is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.