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  1. monastic love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a monastery. Used often of monks and nuns.
  2. adj. Resembling life in a monastery in style, structure, or manner, especially:
  3. adj. Secluded and contemplative.
  4. adj. Strictly disciplined or regimented.
  5. adj. Self-abnegating; austere.
  6. n. A monk.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Pertaining to or characteristic of monks or nuns; ascetic: as, monastic life, vows, or practices.
  2. Adapted to or suitable for monks or nuns; of ascetic character or use: as, monastic buildings or architecture; monastic seclusion.
  3. An epithet noting a style of book-decoration in which medieval forms of compact ornament are strongly stamped on the sides or back of the book without any use of gold-leaf.
  4. an abbot who was also a bishop; or.
  5. a monk consecrated bishop, resident in a monastery, and exercising his office in confirmations, ordinations, etc., but without jurisdiction.
  6. n. A monk; a religious recluse.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Of or relating to monasteries or monks.
  2. n. A person with monastic ways, e.g. monks.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A monk.
  2. adj. Of or pertaining to monasteries, or to their occupants, rules, etc., .
  3. adj. Secluded from temporal concerns and devoted to religion; recluse.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a male religious living in a cloister and devoting himself to contemplation and prayer and work
  2. adj. of communal life sequestered from the world under religious vows

Etymologies

  1. Middle English monastik, from Old French monastique, from Late Latin monasticus, from Late Greek monastikos, from Greek monazein, to live alone; see monastery. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “He was very demanding with himself and others in monastic observance, but rather than imposing discipline he sought to make people follow it by persuasion , the Pope explained.”

    History

  • “Such occurrences mark time in monastic life and find their way into the vitae.”

    Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany

  • “The nuns built and rebuilt their churches and monastic compounds as funds allowed, adding new dormitories as their membership increased or the fashion in monastic sleeping arrangements shifted from common rooms to individual cells.”

    Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany

  • “Early examples of the genre often depicted real or imagined debates between a heretic and a Catholic and originated primarily in monastic communities, from the pens of such prestigious abbots as Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable.”

    A Tender Age: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

  • “It was a sunless afternoon, and the picture was all in monastic shades of black and white and ashen grey: the sick under their earth-coloured blankets, their livid faces against the pillows, the black dresses of the women (they seemed all to be in mourning) and the silver haze floating out from the little acolyte's censer.”

    Fighting France

  • “In an appendix we have scheduled the chief classics found in English monastic catalogues to indicate roughly the extent to which they were collected and used.”

    Old English Libraries; The Making, Collection and Use of Books During the Middle Ages

  • “He was the first, moreover, to establish an extraordinary and permanent tribunal for heresy trials -- an institution which afterwards became known as the monastic”

    The Inquisition A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church

  • “The upper part of the face is innocent, the hair cropped round the head; the face is beardless and the expression monastic, but between the nose and mouth there is a broad slope, and the lips, parting in a straight gash, wear a smile, which as we look seems just a little impudent, just”

    The Cathedral

  • “In these modern times, when man's fair sister is asking admission at the doors of classic halls, where man has hitherto reigned in monastic solitude, the query is often raised by our modern sociologists, Can man and woman, with propriety, pursue their studies together?”

    Oldtown Folks

  • “Etchmiatzin, or Utch Kilisiya, meaning Three Churches, as it is termed by the Turks and Persians, consists of nothing but three very plain monastic buildings or churches, situated in the midst of barren plains.”

    Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia

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synonyms (6)

Words with the same meaning

  1. monk
  1. recluse
  1. conventual
  1. monachal
  1. monkish
  1. monkly

equivalents (2)

Other words for ‘monastic’

  1. unworldly
  1. monastical

same context (16)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. ecclesiastical
  2. buddhist
  3. medieval
  1. clerical
  2. feudal
  3. monkish
  1. sacred
  2. colonial
  3. scholastic
  1. tribal
  2. civic
  3. rural
  1. austere
  2. historic
  3. episcopal
  1. Gothic

rhymes (20)

Words with the same terminal sound

  1. anaplastic
  2. bombastic
  3. desmoplastic
  4. drastic
  1. dynastic
  2. ecclesiastic
  3. elastic
  4. enthusiastic
  1. fantastic
  2. gymnastic
  3. iconoclastic
  4. inelastic
  1. interscholastic
  2. onomastic
  3. plastic
  4. sarcastic
  1. scholastic
  2. stochastic
  3. thermoplastic
  4. unenthusiastic

reverse dictionary (104)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. Cistercian
  2. order of saint benedict
  3. augustinian order
  4. benedictine order
  5. Trappist
  6. secular
  7. monachal
  8. monastical
  9. monkish
  10. monkery
  11. Catholic
  12. consuetudinary
  13. monastic
  14. oblate
  15. regular
  16. religious
  17. tonsure
  18. infirmarian
  19. Dom
  20. deraignment
  1. conventual
  2. geronomite
  3. gothique
  4. jubilarian
  5. mandriarch
  6. monastic architecture
  7. monasticize
  8. paulite
  9. skete
  10. monastically
  11. Recollet
  12. religieux
  13. semicope
  14. __init__
  15. Athos
  16. Augustin
  17. broella
  18. Culdee
  19. gerontikon
  20. judas-cup
  1. scrivener
  2. secularize
  3. monasticism
  4. abbey
  5. Buddha
  6. canonical life
  7. cloister
  8. congregation
  9. dean of a monastery
  10. Eastern Church
  11. monachize
  12. cellarer
  13. scapular
  14. scapulary
  15. discipline
  16. hospice
  17. misericord
  18. prior
  19. Augustinian
  20. Augustinian canons
  1. Augustinian hermits
  2. Austin Friars
  3. consuetudinal
  4. mendicant orders
  5. monachism
  6. monasterial
  7. obedience
  8. oblati
  9. provincial
  10. religieuse
  11. religion
  12. secularization
  13. inner temple
  14. tertiary
  15. Third Order
  16. Trinitarian
  17. abbot
  18. accolade
  19. Basilian
  20. Benedictine
  1. dom
  2. ephemerius
  3. exarch
  4. friar
  5. Hospitaler
  6. jesuate
  7. laud
  8. Lollard
  9. macarian
  10. matin
  11. novice
  12. novitiate
  13. office
  14. order
  15. penitentiary
  16. provostry
  17. schema
  18. sergeant
  19. sisterhood
  20. clerigo
  1. misericorde
  2. temple
  3. theatin
  4. worldly

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‘monastic’ has been looked up 1655 times, loved by 7 people, added to 30 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 12.