seraph

Back-formation of singular from plural seraphim, from Latin seraphim, from Biblical Hebrew שְׂרָפִים (sərāp̄īm), plural form of שָׂרָף (sārāp̄). The plural "seraphims" occurs in the King James Bible (Isaiah chapter 6).

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the singular "seraph" may have originated with John Milton, who used it in Book I of Paradise Lost (1667).

• enPR: sĕrˈ -əf; IPA^(key): /ˈsɛɹəf/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛɹəf
• Homophone: serif

seraph (plural seraphs or seraphim or (nonstandard) seraphims)

1. (biblical) A burning serpent, often winged, with human hands and sometimes feet; one of God's entourage. On Earth, they strike with burning poison; in Heaven, with burning coal. A description can be found at the beginning of Isaiah chapter 6.
2. (post-biblical) A six-winged angel; one of the highest choir or order of angels in Christian angelology, ranked above cherubim, and below God.
   • 1857, Herman Melville, chapter XXIII, in The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade:

     From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which came a voice, sweet as a seraph's

• saraph (rare)
• seraphim (archaic or nonstandard)

• uraeus

• seraphic

• archangel
• cherub

• E sharp, E-sharp, Harpes, Sharpe, Sherpa, Spehar, e sharp, e-sharp, harpes, hepars, pasher, phares, phaser, phrase, raphes, shaper, sharpe, sherpa, shrape, sphear

From Koine Greek σεράφ (seráph), back-formed from σεραφείμ (serapheím) by analogy with Biblical Hebrew שְׂרָפִים (śərāp̄îm), the plural form of שָׂרָף (śārāp̄, “burning one”), often translated as "fiery ones" although meaning is uncertain; perhaps related to the root שרף (“to burn”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈsɛ.rapʰ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈsɛː.raf]

seraph n or m (genitive seraph)

1. (biblical, chiefly in the plural) seraph

   Coordinate term: cherūb

   • Nova Vulgata, Isaiah 6:2&6

     Seraphim stabant iuxta eum; sex alae uni et sex alae alteri: duabus velabat faciem suam et duabus velabat pedes suos et duabus volabat.

     Et volavit ad me unus de seraphim, et in manu eius calculus, quem forcipe tulerat de altari,

   • c. 1300, Richard of Middleton, Clarissimi theologi magistri Ricardi de Media Villa‎^[1], published 1591:

     & superior angelus inferioris ordinis, est inferior inferiori angelo superioris ordinis: & summus seraph est inferior Deo in infinitum.

     and a higher angel of a lower order is inferior to a lower angel of a higher order; and the highest seraph is infinitely inferior to God.

Indeclinable noun (with a distinct plural; four different stems).

• “Sĕrăphīn”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• sĕrăphīm in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.