a member of the religious congregation of the Oratory
Oratorian in American English
(ˌɔrəˈtɔriən)
noun
a member of an Oratory
Oratorian in American English
(ˌɔrəˈtɔriən, -ˈtour-, ˌɑr-)
Roman Catholic Church
noun
1.
a member of an Oratory
adjective
2.
of or pertaining to the Oratorians
Word origin
[1635–45; oratory2 + -an]This word is first recorded in the period 1635–45. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: abutment, cascade, coordinate, domesticate, focus-an is a suffix occurring originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nounsdenoting places (Roman; urban) or persons (Augustan), and now productively forming English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern.Attached to geographical names, it denotes provenance or membership (American; Chicagoan), the latter sense now extended to membership in social classes, religious denominations,etc., in adjectives formed from various kinds of noun bases (Episcopalian; pedestrian; Puritan; Republican) and membership in zoological taxa (acanthocephalan; crustacean). Attached to personal names, it has the additional senses “contemporary with” (Elizabethan; Jacobean) or “proponent of” (Hegelian; Freudian) the person specified by the noun base. It also occurs in a set of personal nouns,mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works withthe referent of the base noun (comedian; grammarian; historian; theologian)