Word.ws English Dictionary

stylites

UK/ˈstʌɪlʌɪts/US/ˈstaɪlaɪts/

stylites is the plural of stylite.

Meaning of stylite

Noun

stylite (plural stylites)

  1. (historical) A Christian ascetic in ancient times who lived alone on top of a tall pillar.
    • Daniel, the famous stylite of the city, actually descended from his pillar for the first time in fifteen years, terrifying Basiliscus into the withdrawal of his edict.1997, John Julius Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium, Penguin, published 1998, page 53
    Synonyms:
    pillar-saint, pillarist

Proper noun capitalized: Stylites

UK/staɪˈlaɪtiːz/US/staɪˈlaɪtiz/

Stylites

  1. an epithet of several saints revered as stylites

Origin of stylites

Representing the Latin Stȳlītēs and/or the Ancient Greek Στῡλῑ́της (Stūlī́tēs) in saints’ epithets borrowed or adapted in toto from those languages.

Questions about stylites

What does stylites mean?
Stylites means an epithet of several saints revered as stylites.
What is stylites the plural of?
Stylites is the plural of stylite.
What part of speech is stylites?
Stylites is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce stylites?
Stylites is pronounced /ˈstʌɪlʌɪts/ (UK).

Words near stylites in the dictionary

  1. stylistician
  2. stylisticians
  3. stylistics
  4. stylists
  5. stylite
  6. stylites
  7. stylitic
  8. stylitism
  9. stylization
  10. stylizations
  11. stylize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stylites (page history and authors); Stylites (page history and authors); stylite (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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Cite this entry: “stylites.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stylites. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.