catholic
Other forms: catholically
When capitalized, Catholic refers to the Catholic Church. With a lower-case "c," catholic means "universal" and "inclusive." If you listen to anything from hip-hop to Baroque, you have catholic taste in music.
When it entered the English language in the sixteenth century, catholic simply meant "general" or "common." Applied to the Western Church, it essentially meant "the Church universal," or the whole body of Christian believers, as opposed to separate congregations. After the Reformation, the Western Church called itself the Catholic Church to distinguish itself from communities of faith that were no longer obedient to Rome. This usage remains the most common, although you can still use catholic to mean general.
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comprehensive or broad-minded in tastes or interests; free from provincial prejudices or attachments“catholic in one's tastes”synonyms:broad-mindedinclined to respect views and beliefs that differ from your own
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Vocabulary lists containing catholic
After meeting the Tucks, a family that is able to live forever after drinking from a magical spring, Winnie Foster questions whether immortality is a blessing or a curse.
In the late 1920s, physicist Ernest Lawrence invented the cyclotron and ushered in a new era of industrial-scale scientific research.
In this collection of twelve essays, the leader of New England's transcendentalist movement shares his philosophical ideas on different aspects of mid-nineteenth-century life. Read the full text here.