Definition of "rector" []

• A cleric in charge of a parish in the Protestant Episcopal Church. (noun)
• An Anglican cleric who has charge of a parish and owns the tithes from it. (noun)
• A Roman Catholic priest appointed to be managerial as well as spiritual head of a church or other institution, such as a seminary or university. (noun)
• The principal of certain schools, colleges, and universities. (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.

• "To a rector who has resigned is often given the title rector emeritus."
• "The term rector is applied likewise to the heads of universities, seminaries, and colleges; to the local superiors of religious houses of men; to the pope, as rector of the world, in the conferring of the tiara."
• "I find something satisfyingly timeless about it, with sunlight on the Georgian orange brick, the feeling that perhaps the rector is within, preparing his sermon to be preached in the equally satisfying Perpendicular church at the back."