Word.ws English Dictionary

mendicant

UK/ˈmɛn.dɪ.kənt/

mendicant adjective: depending on alms for a living.

Adjective

mendicant (not comparable)

  1. Depending on alms for a living.
  2. Of or pertaining to a beggar.
  3. Of or pertaining to a member of a religious order forbidden to own property, and who must beg for a living.

Noun

mendicant (plural mendicants)

  1. A pauper who lives by begging.
    • I made £150 by Alton Locke, and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a stercoraceous mendicant if I had hollowed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the...1856 May, Thomas Hughes, quoting Charles Kingsley, “Prefatory Memoir”, in Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet. […], London: Macmillan and Co., published 1876, →OCLC, page lvi
    • Across Ukraine, the initial shock over the confrontation, which culminated in President Donald Trump summarily dismissing Mr. Zelenskyy from the White House as if he were some ungrateful mendicant, has subsided.2025 March 3, Howard LaFranchi, “Ukrainians flock to Zelenskyy’s banner, but hope for solution with US”, in The Christian Science Monitor
  2. A religious friar, forbidden to own personal property, who begs for a living.

mendicant meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam

mendicant in Urdu

mendicant
ملنگ malaṅg

mendicant in Bengali

friar
দরবেশ dôrbeś

mendicant in Telugu

a mendicant
యాచకుడు yācakuḍu

mendicant in Malayalam

vagrant, beggar, tramp
ഭിക്ഷു, വ്രജകൻ, ഭിക്ഷക്കാരൻ, പരിവ്രാജകൻ, പിച്ചക്കാരൻ, ഗോസായി
More languagesFewer languages
mendicant in Kannada
ಗೊರವ, ಕಿತ್ತಡಿ
mendicant in Punjabi
ਮੰਗਤਾ maṅgtā
mendicant in Sanskrit
भिक्षु bhikṣu, जातक jātaka
mendicant in Tagalog
tanglo

Forms of mendicant

pluralmendicants

Origin of mendicant

From Middle English mendicant, from Latin mendīcāns, present participle of mendīcō (“beg”). Compare French mendiant.

Words formed from mendicant

Phrases with mendicant

Questions about mendicant

What does mendicant mean?
Mendicant means depending on alms for a living.
What is mendicant in Urdu?
Mendicant in Urdu is ملنگ (malaṅg). See Mendicant meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is mendicant?
Mendicant can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce mendicant?
Mendicant is pronounced /ˈmɛn.dɪ.kənt/ (UK).

Words near mendicant in the dictionary

  1. mendicament
  2. mendicancies
  3. mendicancy
  4. mendicancy squad
  5. mendicancy squads
  6. mendicant
  7. mendicant order
  8. mendicant orders
  9. mendicants
  10. mendicate
  11. mendicated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mendicant (page history and authors); ملنگ (Urdu) (page history and authors); యాచకుడు (Telugu) (page history and authors); mendicant (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); mendicant (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); जातक (Sanskrit) (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: en-us-mendicant.ogg.

Cite this entry: “mendicant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mendicant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.