Dictionary Definition
mendicant adj : practicing beggary; "mendicant
friars"
Noun
1 a male member of a religious order that
originally relied soley on alms [syn: friar]
2 a pauper who lives by begging [syn: beggar]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Translations
Noun
Translations
friar
- German: Bettelmönch
- Polish: mnich żebrzący
Related terms
Extensive Definition
The term mendicant (Latin mendicans, begging)
refers to begging or
relying on charitable donations, and is most widely used for
religious followers or
ascetics who rely
exclusively on charity to survive.
In principle, mendicant orders or followers do
not own property, either individually or collectively, and have
taken a vow of poverty,
in order that all their time and energy could be expended on
practicing or preaching their religion or way of life and serving
the poor.
Many religious orders adhere to a mendicant way
of life, including the Catholic
mendicant
orders, Hindu ascetics,
some dervishes of
Sufi Islam, and the
monastic orders of
Buddhism.
In the Catholic
Church, followers of Saint
Francis of Assisi and Saint
Dominic became known as mendicants, as they would beg for food,
while they preached to the villages.
See also
External Links
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Albigensian, Catharist, Franciscan, Sabbatarian, Trappist, Waldensian, abbacomes, abbot, abstainer, abstinent, anchorite, anchoritic, ascetic, austere, beadsman, beggar, beggared, beggarly, begging, bereaved, bereft, bhikshu, brother, bum, bummer, cadger, cadging, caloyer, celibate, cenobite, conventual, conventual prior,
coupon clippers, deprived, dervish, disadvantaged, drone, eremitic, fakir, flagellant, fleeced, freeloader, friar, ghettoized, grand prior,
hermit, hieromonach, hobo, idle rich, impoverished, in need, in
rags, in want, indigent, lay abbot, lay
brother, leisure class, loafer, lounge lizard, lumpen
proletariat, mendicant friar, mendicant order, monastic, monk, moocher, mooching, necessitous, needy, nonworker, on relief, out at
elbows, palmer, panhandler, parasite, pauperized, petitionary, pilgrim, pillar saint, pillarist, poverty-stricken,
prayerful, precative, prior, puritan, puritanical, religieux, religious, rentiers, rigoristic, sannyasi, schnorrer, scrounger, scrounging, self-denying,
spiv, sponger, starveling, stripped, stylite, suppliant, supplicant, supplicating, supplicatory, the
unemployable, the unemployed, tramp, underprivileged, wedded
to poverty, yogi, yogin