Stercoranist

//ˈstɜːkəɹənɪst// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One who believes that the Eucharist undergoes the process of digestion in, and eventually elimination from, the body of the recipient, not just in the empirical accidents of its elements, but as the body and blood of Christ. derogatory, historical

    "[T]his very thing that Mr. Arnaud [i.e., Antoine Arnauld] believes Amalarius vvas a Stercoraniſt ought to convince him on the contrary that this Author did not believe the change or converſion of the ſubſtance in the Euchariſt."

Example

More examples

"[T]his very thing that Mr. Arnaud [i.e., Antoine Arnauld] believes Amalarius vvas a Stercoraniſt ought to convince him on the contrary that this Author did not believe the change or converſion of the ſubſtance in the Euchariſt."

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin stercoranista + English -ist (suffix denoting people who subscribe to particular theological doctrines or religious denominations). Stercoranista is derived from Latin stercora + -n- + -ista (suffix denoting people who believe or practise); while stercora is the nominative plural of stercus (“dung, excrement, ordure”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)terǵ-, *(s)terḱ-, *(s)treḱ- (“dung, manure; to soil, sully; to decay”).

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