provincials

Noun

provincial (plural provincials)

1. A person belonging to a province; one who is provincial.
2. A monastic superior, who, under the general of his order, has the direction of all the religious houses of the same fraternity in a given district, called a province of the order.
   • The Franciscan provincial Diego de Landa set up a local Inquisition which unleashed a campaign of interrogation and torture on the Indio population.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 700
3. (obsolete) A constitution issued by the head of an ecclesiastical province.
   • Or els is thys Goddis law,
     Decrees or decretals,
     Or holy sinodals,
     Or els provincyals,
     Thus within the wals
     Of holy church to deale […]?c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 65, lines 130–135
4. A country bumpkin.

See all 11 meanings of provincial