sexton

From Old French segrestien, from Medieval Latin sacristanus, based on Latin sacer (“sacred”). Doublet of sacristan.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛk.stən/

• Audio (General Australian):

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• Rhymes: -ɛkstən
• Hyphenation: sex‧ton

sexton (plural sextons)

1. A church official who looks after a church building and its graveyard and may act as a gravedigger and bell ringer.
   • 1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge. Chapter 61.”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume III, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC:

     on that same night, Mr Haredale, having strongly bound his prisoner, with the assistance of the sexton, and forced him to mount his horse, conducted him to Chigwell

   • 1927, Men Without Women, Ernest Hemingway, An Alpine Idyll:

     We stopped in the road and watched the sexton shovelling in the new earth. A peasant with a black beard and high leather boots stood beside the grave. The sexton stopped shovelling and straightened his back. The peasant in the high boots took the spade from the sexton and went on filling in the grave

2. A sexton beetle.

• sacristan

• sextonry
• sextonship
• Sleeping Sexton

From Old Swedish sæxtan, siæxtān, from Old Norse sextán, from Proto-Germanic *sehstehun.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛksˌtɔn/

• Audio:

  (file)

sexton

1. sixteen

• sextonde
• sextondel

• sexton in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• sexton in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• sexton in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)