eremite
(ˈɛrɪmaɪt)
Forms: 3 æremite, 3–7 heremite, -yte, 5 herimyte, 3– eremite.
[ad. late L. erēmīta (med.L. herēmīta, ad. eecl. Gr. ἐρηµίτης, f. ἐρηµία a desert, f. ἐρῆµος uninhabited. In OF. the regular phonetic descendant of late L. (h)erēmīta was (h)ermite with loss of the middle syllable (see hermit); but the L. word was also adapted in OF. as (h)eremite, and this was taken into ME. Originally h)eremite and h)ermit(e, hermit, were employed indiscriminately; but from about the middle of the 17th c. they have been differentiated in use, hermit being the ordinary and popular word, while eremite (always spelt without the unetymological h) is used either poet. or rhetorically, or with special reference to its primitive use in Gr.]
1. One who has retired into solitude from religious motives; a recluse, hermit.
Said esp. of the Christian solitaries from the 3rd cent. onwards, as distinguished from the cœnobites, who, though withdrawn from the world, lived as members of a community.
| c 1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 85 Seint iohan baptist þe on his childhode bicom eremite. 1205 Lay. 18804 Þene æremite [1275 heremite] he iseh come. a 1340 Hampole Psalter ci. 7 Heremytis..þat flees þe felaghshipe of men. 1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) V. 87 Paule þe firste heremyte. 1486 Bk. St. Albans F. vij a, An Obseruans of herimytis. 1586 J. Hooker Girald. Irel. in Holinshed (1808) VI. 113 A Satyre in the wildernesse did talke with Antonie the heremite. 1667 Milton P.L. iii. 474 Embryo's and Idiots, Eremits and Friers. 1764 A. Maclaine tr. Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. iii. §15 The Eremites..seem to have deserved no other reproach than that of a delirious and extravagant fanaticism. 1812 Byron Ch. Har. i. iv, His native land..seemed to him more lone than Eremite's sad cell. 1874 H. Reynolds John Bapt. viii. 508 The law of the eremite and the cœnobite corresponds with the transitory dispensation of John. |
b. transf. (By Milton used with allusion to the lit. sense ‘desert-dweller’.)
| 1671 Milton P.R. i. 8 Thou Spirit who ledst this glorious Eremite Into the Desert. 1832 Lytton Eugene A. x, The twilight Eremites of books and closets. 1847 Emerson Woodnotes Wks. (Bohn) I. 430 The little eremite Flies gaily forth, and sings in sight. |
2. In the formal designation of certain monastic orders: e.g. Eremites (Hermits) of St. Augustine, a branch of the Augustinian Friars.
| 1577–87 Holinshed Chron. III. 926/1 At Padua in the church of the heremites of saint Augustine. 1651 Life Father Sarpi (1676) 6 The mother begun to have almost a perpetual conversation among those immur'd Heremites of Saint Hermagora. 1773 Noorthouck Hist. Lond. 600 The founder of the eremites of St. Anthony. |
3. A (? quasi-religious) mendicant, a vagabond (see hermit).
| 1495 Act 11 Hen. VII, c. 2 §3 Every vagabounde heremyte or begger able to labre. |
4. attrib.
| 1651 W. Cartwright Ordinary i. v. in Hazl. Dodsley XII. 231 Let us try To win that old eremite thing. 1816 Scott Antiq. xx, Like a grey palmer, or eremite preacher. 1843 Carlyle Past & Pr. (1858) 250 Eremite fanaticisms and fakeerings. 1861 J. Sheppard Fall Rome xi. 587 The eremite and monastic theory of the Christian life which was then almost universally held. |