Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having received the tonsure; shaven; hence, clerical.
- Having a bald spot on the head like a tonsure.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Having the tonsure; shaven; shorn; clipped; hence, bald.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb Simple past tense and past participle of
tonsure .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having a bald spot either shaved or natural
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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In "Office of the Dead," for example, the hooded figures in the background are clearly separated from the tonsured clerics in the middle-ground, who in turn stand apart from the robed eminences in the foreground.
'Fashion In The Middle Ages' At The Getty Center, Los Angeles The Huffington Post News Editors 2011
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In "Office of the Dead," for example, the hooded figures in the background are clearly separated from the tonsured clerics in the middle-ground, who in turn stand apart from the robed eminences in the foreground.
'Fashion In The Middle Ages' At The Getty Center, Los Angeles The Huffington Post News Editors 2011
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Which might well be the case, seeing this man was undoubtedly tonsured, in authority here, and a priest.
His Disposition 2010
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Father Francisco was tonsured, wearing a thin line of hair around his otherwise bald head, while Antonio retained the silky curls Beatriz had always complained were wasted on him.
Crusade Nancy Holder 2010
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A Benedictine like these his brothers, tonsured and habited, he stood erect in the dignity of his office and the humility and simplicity of his nature, as fragile as a child and as durable as a tree.
His Disposition 2010
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The mobs in Balliguda caught hold of two boys of the Catholic hostel and tonsured their heads.
Oh, Fine. Just Fine. John 2008
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I'd gathered Santa Fe was an extravagant, wide-open community, but even I was astonished at the amounts I saw change hands that night; the gamblers of Santa Fe, whether they were drunk traders, flash greasers, desperate immigrants, cold-eyed swells with pistols prominently displayed in their waistbands, or even the couple of tonsured priests who had an apparently bottomless satchel of coin and crossed themselves before every cast of the dice, were evidently no pikers.
Isabelle Estelle Bruno 2010
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His young, handsome, tonsured head was exquisitely carved in stone.
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It was short and neatly tonsured and he had a brown beard, finely trimmed to a point that just skimmed the deep rolled collar of his habit.
Sick Cycle Carousel 2010
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Nearly two dozen displaced Kashmiri Pandit tonsured their heads in New Delhi.www. scoopnews.in
Kashmiri Pandits observe September 14 as their Martyr���s Day after their exodus from their origin 2009
RevBrently commented on the word tonsured
From p. 14 of Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A Time to Keep Silence":
The muted light in the church suspended a filament between us, reproducing the exact atmosphere of an early seventeenth-century studio in which--tonsured, waxen, austere and exsanguinous--were bowed in prayer the models of Zurbarán and El Greco.
January 21, 2014