Definition of "subdeacon" [sub•dea•con]

• A cleric ranking just below a deacon. (noun)
• A cleric who acts as assistant to the deacon at High Mass and normally reads the Epistle at the Eucharist. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Ancient ecclesiastical monuments and documents lead us to believe that a subdeacon was a sort of head-acolyte or arch-acolyte, holding the same relation to the acolytes as the archdeacon to deacons, with this difference, however, that there was only one archdeacon, while there was a deacon for each region."
• "Harnack further holds that the gentle treatment of sinners is an interpolation intended against Novatianism, and that the deaconesses as well as the subdeacon are a later addition, He dates the original form in the first half of the third century, and the additions in the last quarter of it; but the reasons given are very weak."
• "The fourth and fifth Lessons were read by two bishops, the sixth and seventh by the cardinals, the eighth by a subdeacon, and the ninth by the Pope himself."