cenobite
/ˈsɛn.əˌbaɪt/
cenobite noun: a new or recent member of a Greek monastic religious order; a caloyer.
Noun
cenobite (plural cenobites)
- A new or recent member of a Greek monastic religious order; a caloyer.
- Lamprecht knew very well how the war was going and was perfunctory in his rounding up of Jews and cenobites.1980, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers, page 418
- A monk who lives in a religious community, rather than in solitude.
- To deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to outrage its nature. The prisoner and the cenobite are aware that the herd exists beyond their exile; they are an aspect of it. But when the herd no longer exists, there is, for the herd creature, no longer entity. He is a part of...1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 208
- A torturous demon creature made famous by the Hellraiser series.
Forms of cenobite
| plural | cenobites |
|---|---|
| alternative form | coenobite |
| alternative form | cœnobite |
Origin of cenobite
From Old French cenobite or Ecclesiastical Latin coenobīta, from coenobium, from Ancient Greek κοινόβιον (koinóbion, “community life, convent”), from κοινός (koinós, “common”) + βίος (bíos, “life”).
Words formed from cenobite
Questions about cenobite
- What does cenobite mean?
- Cenobite means a new or recent member of a Greek monastic religious order; a caloyer.
- What part of speech is cenobite?
- Cenobite is a noun.
- How do you pronounce cenobite?
- Cenobite is pronounced /ˈsɛn.əˌbaɪt/.
- What is the plural of cenobite?
- The plural of cenobite is cenobites.
Words near cenobite in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cenobite (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-cenobite.wav.
Cite this entry: “cenobite.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cenobite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.