converso
converso noun: a Jew or Muslim in Spain or Portugal who converted to Roman Catholicism under duress, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries.
Noun
converso (plural conversos)
- A Jew or Muslim in Spain or Portugal who converted to Roman Catholicism under duress, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries.
- Guillermina Jasso, a sociology professor at New York University, said Angel was “evocative of the old converso practice of taking on very Christian surnames as a way of survival in a suspicious environment.”2007 January 20, Sam Roberts, “New Favor for a Name That Straddles Cultures”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 09 Jun 2021
- In the Inquisition's terms, both were automatically suspect by the fact that their families were conversos, and they might be seen as emerging from that maelstrom of religious energy released by the religious realignment of Spain in the 1490s.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, pages 672–3
- Synonyms:
- crypto-Jew, Marrano
Synonyms of converso
Forms of converso
| plural | conversos |
|---|
Origin of converso
Borrowed from Spanish converso. Doublet of converse.
Questions about converso
- What does converso mean?
- Converso means a Jew or Muslim in Spain or Portugal who converted to Roman Catholicism under duress, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries.
- What part of speech is converso?
- Converso is a noun.
- What is the plural of converso?
- The plural of converso is conversos.
Words near converso in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: converso (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “converso.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/converso. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.