iconostasis
/ˌaɪkəˈnɒstəsɪs/noun
iconostasis is a noun meaning “A wall of icons between the sanctuary and the nave in an Eastern Orthodox church” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled I-C-O-N-O-S-T-A-S-I-S, and it appears about once in every 32 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of iconostasis is iconostases or iconostaseis.
What does iconostasis mean?
noun
- 1
A wall of icons between the sanctuary and the nave in an Eastern Orthodox church.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce iconostasis?
- /ˌaɪkəˈnɒstəsɪs/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-iconostasis.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of iconostasis
- iconostases plural
- iconostaseis plural
- iconstasis
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is iconostasis?
Iconostasis appears about once in every 32 million words in written English, the 173,967th 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).
Iconostasis in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense a wall of icons:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | iconostase |
| German | Ikonostase |
| Portuguese | iconóstase |
| Spanish | iconostasio |
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 iconostasis come from?
Borrowed from Byzantine Greek εἰκονόστασις (eikonóstasis), from εἰκών (eikṓn, “icon”) + στάσις (stásis, “fixture”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).