Apostate

//əˈpɔs.teɪt// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person who has renounced a religion or faith. countable
  2. 2
    a disloyal person who betrays or deserts their cause or religion or political party or friend etc. wordnet
  3. 3
    One who, after having received sacred orders, renounces his clerical profession.
  4. 4
    One who has renounced a political party, a cause, etc. broadly

    "But the most politically damaging blow came from a late-breaking apostate: Mr. Clooney, who just weeks earlier had spent time with Mr. Biden and helped deliver $28 million to his campaign at a Los Angeles fund-raiser."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Guilty of apostasy. not-comparable

    "We must punish this apostate priest."

Adjective
  1. 1
    not faithful to religion or party or cause wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
deserterrecreantrecreantturncoathereticwithersake

Example

More examples

"Many considered Martin Luther to be an apostate when he first voiced his opinions against the Catholic Church, but he is celebrated today as the father of modern Protestantism."

Etymology

From Late Latin apostata, from Ancient Greek ἀποστάτης (apostátēs, “rebel”), from ἀφίστημι (aphístēmi, “to withdraw, revolt”), from ἀπό (apó, “from”) + ἵστημι (hístēmi, “to stand”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.