Huguenot

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A French Protestant of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A member of the Reformed or Calvinistic communion of France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Huguenots were the Puritans of France, noted in general for their austere virtues and the singular purity of their lives. They were persecuted in the reign of Francis I. and his immediate successors, and after 1562 were frequently at war with the Catholics, under the lead of such men as Admiral Coligny and the King of Navarre (afterward Henry IV. of France). In spite of these wars and the massacre of St. Bartholomew. August 24th, 1572, they continued numerous and powerful, and the edict of Nantes, issued by Henry IV. (1598), secured to them full political and civil rights. Their political power was broken after the surrender of La Rochelle in 1628, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. (1685) and the subsequent persecutions forced hundreds of thousands into exile to Prussia, the Netherlands, Switzerland England, etc. Many settled in the colonies of New York, Virginia, etc., but especially in South Carolina. The name is sometimes applied at the present day to the descendants of the original Huguenots.

Wiktionary

1. n. historical A member of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th century.
2. adj. Of, like or relating to Huguenotism or Huguenots.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Eccl. Hist.) A French Protestant of the period of the religious wars in France in the 16th century.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a French Calvinist of the 16th or 17th centuries