manse

... Yiddish-Catholic priests...?

Just a thought...

Now who lives in that?

rectory-schmectory!

Gratified you deigned to notice, yarb.

I neglected to mention that McGill (among others) tends to use the word "ancestral" before "manse," to accent the snootiness of the term.

cb: you channel the great man to perfection. Chapeau!

Just a note on sionnach's comment: in my experience, a Catholic priest almost always lives in a rectory--no mention of it being anyone's house, manse, Vatican, or mansion. :-)

The OED marks sense 1 as obsolete, however; the latest quote they have for it is from the heavily archaized Harold (1848, set around 1066) by the wretched Bulwer-Lytton:

"You will not find him there," said Godrith, "for I know that as soon as he hath finished his conference with the Atheling, he will leave the city; and I shall be at his own favourite manse over the water at sunset, to take orders for repairing the forts and dykes on the Marches. You can tarry awhile and meet us; you know his old lodge in the forest land?"

For a Presbyterian, actually, clergyman is much more likely than clergyperson.

It seems like those in the U.K. and Commonwealth or former Commonwealth (Empire?) countries have only seen this word in the sense of the 2nd OED meaning.

Ulysses Everett McGill, on the other hand, does not hail from any of those illustrious nations. Ipso facto, that puts me in an awkward position vis-a-vis my accustomed usage of this nomenclature.

*lowers his episcope and sneaks away*

I've also only ever seen this word to describe the residence of a presbyterian clergyman. Protestant clergy lived in rectories and individual Catholic clergy members lived in the parish priest's house (or the curate's house, or the monsignor's residence, or the bishop's palace, or the Vatican, or wherever ..).

But manse was distinctly reserved for presbyterian clergy. And had nothing whatsoever to do with a mansion or manor house.

edited to acknowledge that "clergyman" above should more correctly read "clergyperson". And to say how awkward it is when the person next to one in the internet café is typing through floods of noisy tears... (I offered her a tissue, which only seemed to make things worse. Oh dear)

When I was growing up in Baltimore and attending a Presbyterian church, the minister's house, which was hardly a mansion, was always called "the manse" and was located right next to the church. I had completely forgotten about this word. Thanks for reminding me.

Well, yarb, it was a Scottish bishop who ordained priests and bishops in America after the American Revolution, bypassing the Church of England and the late unpleasantness of the war, thereby perpetuating the Anglican tradition in the US. Episcopalians in the US trace their structural roots to the Church of Scotland, a branch of the Church of England, not the Church of England. The Church of England is the English branch of the Holy Catholic Church begun by Henry VIII, through the Act of Supremacy, disestablished by Queen Mary, re-established by Edward VI, and perpetuated over time by Elizabeth I in the tradiiton known as the Elizabethan Settlement. Don't get me started on Apostolic Succession! It is wrong to say that the Church of Scotland is not episcopal. BAD INFO.

logos: that's exactly the sort of thing Ulysses Everett McGill would say!

The Church of Scotland is episcopal in structure, is it not?

Frindley, have you seen O Brother, Where Art Thou?, in which Ulysses Everett McGill speaks of his "ancestral manse" (which is a clapboard shack (with a rolltop desk))?

Not that this character never misuses words—but I think he was using "manse" as the snooty-version word for "mansion."

This prompted me to go look in the OED:
1. The principal house of an estate; a mansion, a capital messuage. CF. manor
2. a. Originally: an ecclesiastical residence (parochial or collegiate). Now: spec. a house allocated to or occupied by a minister of certain Nonconformist or non-episcopal Churches, esp. the Church of Scotland.

Interestingly, it also lists manse as a verb:
trans. To excommunicate (a person); to curse or damn.

I learn so much hanging out here... *sigh*

I've only ever encountered manse used in the very specialised sense of a clergyman's residence, never as a variant for mansion. In many instances (but not all) a manse is a relatively modest affair, while a mansion is, of course, meant to be imposing.

That said, there is, in a particularly beautiful Federation suburb of Sydney, a manse that almost makes a girl want to (a) join the Uniting Church and (b) study for the ministry. Handsome, of a goodly size, characterful, lovely garden and not in the slightest bit pretentious.

Really? For me it's the other way around.

too bad the word mansion is overused. Manse is good; mansion is pretentious and not-so-good.