Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One of a number of early Christian ascetics who lived unsheltered on the tops of high pillars.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In ecclesiastical history, one of a class of solitary ascetics who passed the greater part of their lives unsheltered on the top of high columns or pillars.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Eccl. Hist.) One of a sect of anchorites in the early church, who lived on the tops of pillars for the exercise of their patience; -- called also
pillarist andpillar saint .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Christianity, historical A
Christian ascetic in ancient times who lived alone on top of a tallpillar .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an early Christian ascetic who lived on top of high pillars
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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There was a time a "stylite" was a saint who lived atop a pillar or a post in some forsaken desert.
Knocking From Inside 2008
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He's said to be as rich as Croesus and as reclusive as a stylite, and that's all anyone knows of him.
red dust Ryn Cricket 2010
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To choose a stone perch in center of the sea where you will stay, a stylite, unaffected
To Be Undone 2009
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I'm not yet some fanatic stylite, sitting on a pillar, waiting for the snap of the seventh seal, so I am somewhat familiar with the world around me.
Archive 2006-09-01 Patrick J. Smith 2006
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I'm not yet some fanatic stylite, sitting on a pillar, waiting for the snap of the seventh seal, so I am somewhat familiar with the world around me.
Paying the piper...or not. Patrick J. Smith 2006
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My desire to go and hear Berma received a fresh stimulus which enabled me to await the coming of the matinée with impatience and with joy; having gone to take up, in front of the column on which the playbills were, my daily station, as excruciating, of late, as that of a stylite saint, I had seen there, still moist and wrinkled, the complete bill of
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It, indeed, sent the stylite to his pillar, the hermit to the wilderness, the ascetic to the scourge and hair-cloth shirt; but it also led the warrior to the Holy Land, the beggar to the castle-hearth, and the workman to the building of the
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860 Various
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At the end of the rite, however, the patriarch ascended to give Holy Communion to the stylite and to receive it from him.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6: Fathers of the Church-Gregory XI 1840-1916 1913
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Old Cotta, who was inspecting the canals and the navigation of the Nile, had many times expressed a desire to see the stylite and the new city, to which the name of Stylopolis had been given.
Thais Anatole France 1884
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Soon the report of this extraordinary existence spread from village to village, and the labourers of the valley came on Sundays, with their wives and children, to look at the stylite.
Thais Anatole France 1884
chained_bear commented on the word stylite
"...yet he had always despised the stylite or even hair-shirt kind of asceticism..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days, 55
March 20, 2008