noun
- Ecclesiastical.
- a cup for the wine of the Eucharist or Mass.
- the wine contained in it.
- a drinking cup or goblet.
- a cuplike blossom.
noun
- poetic a drinking cup; goblet
- Christianity a gold or silver cup containing the wine at Mass
- the calyx of a flower, esp a cup-shaped calyx
early 14c., from Anglo-French chalice, from Old French chalice, collateral form of calice (Modern French calice), from Latin calicem (nominative calix) “cup,” cognate with Greek kylix “cup, drinking cup, cup of a flower,” from PIE root *kal- “cup.” Ousted Old English cognate cælic, an ecclesiastical borrowing of the Latin word, and earlier Middle English caliz, from Old North French.