Word of the Month No, no, no!!!  We don't mean the words that come to mind after you get cut off by a Hummer on Plandome Road (heavens, be!).  We're just getting started with a monthly plan to peak your curiosity about words and phrases that are central to our faith.  Go let's get started ... and keep those other phrases to yourself!!! September 2006 This month’s word is ‘church.’  Although we all know what church means, we are probably less aware of its origins and the interesting etymological history that the word has.  The word church comes from the Greek word ‘kyriakon’ (Кυριακόν), which means something that belongs to the Lord.  The work ‘Lord’ in Greek is ‘Kyrios,’ but we know it best in it vocative form as ‘Kyrie,’ which can be found in the beginning of our liturgy in the “Lord, have mercy”.   The word moved through the German (Kirche) and Dutch (Kerke), before coming to English as ‘Church’ and to Scottish as ‘Kirk.’  Most properly ‘church’ refers to a building, not to a group of Christians. The other Greek word that is associated with church is ‘ecclesia,’ which literally means those who are called-out.  We know the word mostly through the English term ‘ecclesiastical.’  In French and Italian ‘ecclesia’ predominated over ‘kyriakon’ in providing the root for the word for an ecclesiastic building, so the French word for church is ‘eglesia’ and the Italian is ‘chiesa.’ September 2006