Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Selfdiscipline; self-denial.

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

  • noun self-discipline

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun rigorous self-denial and active self-restraint

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ἄσκησις (askēsis) "exercise"

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Examples

  • The elusive but seductive goal of this intellectual ascesis is to turn us into anthropologists of our own culture and historians of our own present.

    'That Obscure Object of Historical Desire' 2006

  • The life of spiritual discipline designed for the purpose—prayer, liturgy, sacrifice, devotions—is called ascesis, and the monastic tradition, especially of Eastern Christianity, exists to enable some people to devote their lives to it, both for their own salvation and as a sign to the rest of us of what we must make out of our own lives in the world.

    Life is war Mike L 2006

  • The life of spiritual discipline designed for the purpose—prayer, liturgy, sacrifice, devotions—is called ascesis, and the monastic tradition, especially of Eastern Christianity, exists to enable some people to devote their lives to it, both for their own salvation and as a sign to the rest of us of what we must make out of our own lives in the world.

    Archive 2006-04-01 Mike L 2006

  • The early ascetics take their name from their training in ascesis, the Greek word for "athletic discipline," but now it came to be chiefly a term applied to early Christian spiritual renunciation and obedience.

    Norris J. Chumley, Ph.D.: The Compelling Spiritual Discipline Of Asceticism Ph.D. Norris J. Chumley 2011

  • The early ascetics take their name from their training in ascesis, the Greek word for "athletic discipline," but now it came to be chiefly a term applied to early Christian spiritual renunciation and obedience.

    Norris J. Chumley, Ph.D.: The Compelling Spiritual Discipline Of Asceticism Ph.D. Norris J. Chumley 2011

  • The courses also teach the importance of ascesis, of renouncing some things in order to grow and develop in the search for a higher good.

    ACN News - Holiness and discipline in Peru Esther 2009

  • The courses also teach the importance of ascesis, of renouncing some things in order to grow and develop in the search for a higher good.

    Archive 2009-06-28 Esther 2009

  • It also does this by its vulgarity and childishness that corrodes the notion of the seriousness of life and the need for ascesis self-discipline, all of which are fundamental elements that maintain family cohesion and stability.

    Modesty of Dress and Love of God Esther G. 2009

  • "The ways of the image and the emblem are opposed; the final line is not a rhetorical statement of reconciliation but an anguished question; it is our perilous fate not to know if the glimpses of unity which we perceive at times can be made more permanent by natural ways or by the ascesis of renunciation, by images or emblem" (202).

    History against Historicism, Formal Matters, and the Event of the Text: De Man with Benjamin 2005

  • The "radical spiritual ascesis" that Rome must undertake is what?

    Archive 2007-11-01 Mike L 2007

Comments

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  • If I ever make a Lispers' Nemeses list, this is going on it.

    May 10, 2008

  • Don't forget specificities.

    May 10, 2008