Megachurch

[Dr. Goodword]

• megachurch •

Pronunciation: me-gê-chêrch • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A church with attendance of 2,000 or more; some 1,200 currently exist in the United States.

Notes: Mega- (meg- before a vowel) is almost a word, for terms like megachurch, megabucks, megaton behave much more like compounds than prefixed forms. Grammatically speaking, as a prefix, mega- should be limited to attachment to Greek stems as in megaphone and megacephalous "big-headed", but it attaches freely these days to native Germanic stems like church and ton, even agency and city, pretty much any other noun you would wish to attach it to: "Yeah, well all the megabytes in your new computer took a megabite out of my wallet!" It should be attached, however, not hyphenated or written as a separate word if possible.



In Play: The days of the quiet little country church seem to be fading into the background as larger and larger congregations are assembled by radio and TV: There are many hidden advantages in megachurches: "Leslie likes the megachurch she attends because she is less likely to be noticed when she doesn't show up."

Word History: The prefix mega- comes from Greek megas "great, large". The Greek word is one of many derived from the same PIE root, meg- "great", found in many Indo-European languages, including Scottish mickle "much, many", Russian mnogo "much, many", not to mention English much itself. In Latin it emerged as magnus "large", a word that appears in many English words and phrases such as Magna Carta, magnum, and magnify. Of course, Hindi maharajah is made up of maha "great", from the same root + rajah "king", a word from the same root as French roi "king" and royal "royal". (Today we thank Warren Bird megamuch for suggesting such a Good Word to us.)

[Dr. Goodword]

Here is a long comment from our old friend Chris Stewart of South Africa, recently retired from Nokia:

A bit of semantic nit-picking, which I simply cannot resist:

https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-me ... i-prefixes

Whist English is what we make of it, and language rules have scant bearing on the world of scientific prefixes, I must point out that by the reasoning generally accorded a megachurch should need at least a million members. What you are describing should more properly be called a kilochurch.

But then, either way, use of such prefixes presumes that church is a unit of measurement ... which of course it isn't,.

A megachurch would mean one million churches, not a million congregants - unless each person constitutes a church (which I suppose some might argue, though I cannot see how a lone individual could be an assembly of anything other than body parts).

That said, ultimately the church is not a building, nor a denomination. It is "the body of Christ, comprising all those who have placed their faith in Jesus for salvation". So just how many bodies can He have? By definition, only one. Thus it simply cannot have a magnitude prefix.

Still, I suppose we have to call these things something, and since common usage habitually degrades/opposes whatever lofty purist convention has been agreed through hard work by legions of scientists, megachurch is as good as anything if one is prepared to go with the flow. Besides, such organisations are after all typically lead by megalomaniacs, rendering it quite apposite.

And that of course leads to the ultimate resolution of the conundrum for the layman. The mega in question is (as you say) simply a way of saying it is large. The SI unit system has stolen/adopted/misappropriated the prefix and given it a precise, exact meaning, which has become ingrained in technically minded people such as myself. We simply cannot help ourselves, given our tendency towards imposing order on a chaotic universe.

[Philip Hudson]

Chris Stewart's observations are apt and correct. They will also be ignored by most.

[David Myer]

Not sure you are right Philip. I have read Chris' comments and I agree with him (and you) and will not ignore them. I for one, will take a stand on megachurch and other words that have mega loosely applied to them. Bravo pedants like Chris.

[Philip Hudson]

Bravo fellow pedants David and Chris.

[Debbymoge]

Where I live (on a sand spit at the end of the earth) there are very large showy new houses, often second homes supposed to become retirement homes, (not always well built), that are referred to as McMansions.
Might I suggest McChurch as a substitute for mega?
It seems to me that would fit both the sense of size and the same lack of taste and permanence (though not necessarily in reference to the literal physical structure).

[Philip Hudson]

I am a member of a very large church although it doesn't quite meet the mega definition. I call it the church. We may need a designation as to denomination and doctrine but we don't need a size designating prefix. Just call them churches.