Parish or perish?
parish is a noun meaning “An administrative part of a diocese that has its own church”; perish is a verb meaning “To decay and disappear; to waste away to nothing”. Use parish as a noun and perish as a verb (parish is also a verb: “To place (an area, or rarely a person) into one or more…”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) parish is about 6.2 times as common as perish.
What is the difference between parish and perish?
| parish | perish | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | verb |
| Meaning | An administrative part of a diocese that has its own church The community attending that church; the members of the parish To place (an area, or rarely a person) into one or more parishes | To decay and disappear; to waste away to nothing To decay in such a way that it cannot be used for its original purpose |
| Example | Near-synonym: vicarate | none recorded |
| Forms | parishes | perishes, perishing, perished |
| Pronunciation | /ˈpæɹɪʃ/ /ˈpɛɹɪʃ/ | /ˈpɛɹɪʃ/ /ˈpeɹɪʃ/ /ˈpeɹəʃ/ |
| In writing | 13 times per million words | 2.1 times per million words |
Sources: parish and perish in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of parish and perish
parish
- 1
An administrative part of a diocese that has its own church
Near-synonym: vicarate
- 2
To place (an area, or rarely a person) into one or more parishes
[…] [m]akes possible, through the aid of the rural ministers, the development of the various phases of the District program, such as (a) Parishing of the District; (b)…
- 3
Pronunciation spelling of perish, representing Mary–marry–merry merger English
- 4
The community attending that church; the members of the parish
- 5
To visit residents of a parish
- 6
USAn ecclesiastical society, usually not bounded by territorial limits, but composed of those persons who choose to unite under the charge of a particular priest, clergyman, or minister; also, loosely…
- 7
A civil subdivision of a British county, often corresponding to an earlier ecclesiastical parish; a similar subdivision in Ireland
- 8
An administrative subdivision in the U.S. state of Louisiana that is equivalent to a county in other U.S. states
perish
- 1
To decay and disappear; to waste away to nothing
- 2
To decay in such a way that it cannot be used for its original purpose
- 3
To die; to cease to live
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, parish or perish?
parish appears 13 times per million words; perish 2.1 times per million words.
parish 13 times per million wordsperish 2.1 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search parish vs perish?
“parish vs perish” is searched about 110 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“perish vs parish”, “parish or perish”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.