anchoress

• Technically, I intend to become an anchoress, a kind of religious hermit. —  The Many-Coloured Land -- Julian May
• The room of an anchorite (male) or an anchoress (female) would be bricked up after the person had entered. —  BlogHer
• Her purity led her own mother to speak other as an "anchoress." —  The Loves of Great Composers
• The townsmen of Gratz, hoarse-voiced touzleheads mostly, divined her to be an anchoress, a saint, or an unfortunate. —  The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay
• He warns her against becoming a 'babbling' or 'gossiping' anchoress, a variety evidently well-known; a recluse whose cell was the depository of all the news from the neighbourhood at a time when newspapers did not exist." —  The Faith of the Millions (2nd series)

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms