2. public worship, religious exercises or services, prayer meeting, communion; devotions, office, benediction, mass, novena; matins, vespers, lauds, compline; ceremony, rite, ritual; camp meeting, revival meeting.
3. Christendom, body of believers, the elect, followers of Christ, disciples of Christ, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church Militant; Holy Mother Church, the Bride of Christ.
4. community of worshipers, congregation, parish, Christian fellowship, communion, body, fold, flock.
5. religion, faith, creed, belief, doctrine; affiliation, persuasion, ism, denomination, sect, cult; faction, schism.
6. clergy, church officials, hierarchy, prelacy, episcopacy, papacy, the Vatican, popedom; presbytery, vestry, parish council, (in some Reformed churches) classis.
7. sacred calling, religious vocation, religion, clerical profession, priesthood, ministry, rabbinate; holy orders, the cloth, the pulpit, the desk; religious life, monasticism, celibacy, the convent.
8. (usu. cap.) pre-Reformation Christianity; the Roman Catholic Church.

churchman, n. ecclesiastic, clergyman, cleric, priest, minister, rabbi. See - clergyman, ecclesiastic, churl, n. 1. rustic, peasant, provincial, country cousin, countryman, hobnail; farmer, plowman, plow-boy, chuff, swain, gaffer, kern, son or tiller of the soil, (in Egypt) fellah, (in Russia) muszhik or moujik, (in Spanish America and Southwestern U.S.) peon, Archaic. hind; yokel, bumpkin, country bumpkin, hawbuck, Dial, lumpkin, Often Disparaging, hillbilly, Disparaging, bogtrotter, Inf. chawbacon, Inf. cider squeezer, Sl. hick, Sl. woodhick, Sl. rube, Sl. hayseed, Sl. hoosier, Fr. Sl. truffe.
2. boor, curmudgeon, brute, barbarian, yahoo, Inf. goop, Chiefly Scot. tyke, Brit. Sl. mucker; lout, oaf, dolt, clod, clodhopper, clodpoll or clodpole or clod-pate, gawk, looby, lubber, ox, clown, slouch, Chiefly Scot. cuddy, Inf. lummox, Sl. klutz, Sl. galoot or galloot, Sl. lug, Brit. Sl. joskin.
3. wretch, cur, cad, scoundrel, dastard, knave, blackguard, rascal, wastrel, ne'er-do-well; bear, vixen, shrew, harpy; beast, hound, viper, skunk, polecat; vulgarian, vulgarist, ribald, Philistine, vulgar or low or ill-bred fellow; All Inf. jerk, rat, creep, stinker, louse, Derog. bastard, Derog. SOB; All Sl. bum, Chiefly Brit, rotter, Chiefly Brit, bounder, Brit, blighter.
4. miser, niggard, scrooge, skinflint, penny pincher, pinchpenny, moneygrubber, pinchfist, hunks, muc-worm, Obs. lickpenny, Archaic, pinchgut, Brit. Dial. codger, Sl. tightwad, Sl. skin, Chiefly Brit. Sl. screw.

churlish, adj. 1. rustic, rural, peasantlike, agrestic, agrarian; pastoral, bucolic, bucolical, sylvan or silvan, Arcadian; inurbane, backwoods, provincial, countrified, countrybred, country-born, upcountry, from the sticks, yokelish, Sl. hickish, Sl. rube, Sl. hayseed; homespun, homebred, homey, homely, homelike, homish, down-home, (usu. of thought or philosophy) cracker-barrel, Inf. folksy.
2. boorish, loutish, oafish, doltish, cloddish, clod-hopping, lubberly, loobyish, clownish, lumpish, lumpen; crude, crass, brutish, barbaric, beastly, bestial, swinish, reptilian, contemptible, base, vile; rude, vulgar, uncouth, coarse, ill-bred, ill-mannered, unmannerly; arrogant, audacious, impudent, insolent, brash, brazen, bold, presumptuous, impertinent.
3. surly, cantankerous, irascible, crabbed, iracund, obnoxious, choleric, brusque, crusty, grumpy, peppery, grouchy, dyspeptic, thorny, bearish, snappish, waspish, snarling, growling, bristling; cross, feisty, huffy, huffish, irritable, peevish, cranky, bilious, testy, touchy, ill-tempered, bad-tempered, short-tempered; fractious, quarrelsome, caviling, disagreeable, Inf ornery, Inf. bitchy, Inf. ugly; caustic, mordant, mor-dacious, biting, cutting, stinging, sarcastic, insulting; sharp, uncivil, rough, harsh; abrupt, curt, short, terse, blunt.