defender of the faith

1. 1.

   a title that Leo X bestowed on Henry VIII and later withdrew; parliament restored the title and it has been used by English sovereigns ever since

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Questions about defender of the faith

What does defender of the faith mean?

defender of the faith means "a title that Leo X bestowed on Henry VIII and later withdrew; parliament restored the title and it has been used by English sovereigns ever since".

Is defender of the faith a common word?

defender of the faith 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.