Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A hermit; a recluse; one who retires from society into a desert or solitary place, to avoid the temptations of the world and to devote himself to contemplation and religious exercises. Also anachoret.
  • noun Synonyms Monk, Hermit, Anchoret. In the classification of religious ascetics, monks are those who adopt a secluded habit of life, but dwell more or less in communities; hermits, or eremites, those who withdraw to desert places, but do not deny themselves shelter or occupation; and anchorets, those most excessive in their austerities, who choose the most absolute solitude, and subject themselves to the greatest privations.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who renounces the world and secludes himself, usually for religious reasons; a hermit; a recluse.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative spelling of anchorite.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • She is acting by me like an angel, and if she were to command me to turn anchoret, I know I ought to obey her. '

    Camilla 2008

  • As he sate thus, with his dark eye turned towards the scowling and blackening heaven, a horseman rode rapidly up to him, and stopping, as if to let his horse breathe for an instant, made a sort of obeisance to the anchoret, with an air betwixt effrontery and embarrassment.

    The Black Dwarf 2004

  • Nothing would persuade me sooner that John was indeed an anchoret, than that which he himself saith, that he did not know Jesus, John 1: 31, whereas he was so very near akin to him.

    From the Talmud and Hebraica 1602-1675 1979

  • Our novice, fearing the danger of dissipation and relaxation, to which numerous communities are generally more exposed than others, chose not to live in the great monastery on the summit, but in a hermitage on the descent of the mountain, under the discipline of Martyrius, a holy ancient anchoret.

    The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints January, February, March Alban Butler

  • Overcome by importunities, he admitted a holy anchoret named Moyses to live with him as his disciple.

    The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints January, February, March Alban Butler

  • In 1528 he seems to have been succeeded by the anchoret Bernard.

    The South of France—East Half C. B. Black

  • Of the death of Harold diuerse report diuerslie, in so much that Girald Cambrensis saith, that after king Harold had receiued manie wounds, and lost his left eie, he fled from the field vnto the citie of Westchester, and liued there long after, an holie life, as an anchoret in the cell of S. James, fast by S. Johns church, and there made a godlie end.

    Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (8 of 8) The Eight Booke of the Historie of England Raphael Holinshed

  • APOLLONIUS was a zealous holy anchoret, and was apprehended by the persecutors at Antinous in Egypt.

    The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints January, February, March Alban Butler

  • The room, in short, showed plainly the presence of a cultivated mind; and Nicholas, who, though unfamiliar with city-life, had received a capital intellectual training at the hands of a scholarly, but anchoret father, was delighted at the signs of culture in his new acquaintance.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 Various

  • Of the outrageous insolence of the Seven Penitents he omits nothing but their sincerity; of the enlightened simplicity of the anchoret philosophers he retains nothing but their selfishness; of the intellectual influence of the Gooroo pontiffs he covets nothing but their dissimulation.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858 Various

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