1. The fourteen books of the Old Testament included in the Vulgate (except for II Esdras) but omitted in Jewish and Protestant versions of the Bible.

The eastern Christian churches (except the Coptic church) accept all these books as canonical, while the Russian Orthodox church accepts these texts as divinely inspired but does not grant them the same status.

2. Etymology: plural of Late Latin apocryphus, "secret, not approved for public reading" or "books of hidden" or "unknown authorship", from Greek apokryphos, "hidden; obscure" referring to those included in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, but not originally written in Hebrew and not counted as genuine by the Jews.

From apo-. "away" + kryptein "to hide". The term Apocrypha is properly plural (the singular would be Apocryphon or apocryphum, so it is normally treated as a collective singular noun form.