custos
/ˈkʌˌstɑs/noun
custos is a noun meaning “A monastic superior, who, under the general of his order, has the direction of all the religious houses of the same fraternity in a given district…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-U-S-T-O-S and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of custos is custodes.
What does custos mean?
noun
- 1
obsoleteA warden.
- 2
A monastic superior, who, under the general of his order, has the direction of all the religious houses of the same fraternity in a given district, called a custody of the order.
- 3
In older forms of musical notation, an indication, at the end of a line of music, of the first note of the next line.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce custos?
- UK /ˈkʌ.stɒs/
- US /ˈkʌˌstɑs/
- US /-ˌstoʊs/
Custos has 2 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of custos
- custodes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is custos?
Custos appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 122,704th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Custos in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense superior of a custody:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does custos come from?
Borrowed from Latin custōs.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).