1
: practicing beggary : engaged in begging
Past the Winter Garden where Cats plays on … past the half-hour photo store, past the mendicant saxophone player on the corner.—
Margot Hornblower
Margot HornblowerMy father also gave me quarters to give to homeless, mendicant men along the route, even though our family was very poor.—Phil Kronk
Phil Kronk2
: of, relating to, belonging to, or constituting a religious order combining monastic life and outside religious activity and originally owning neither personal nor community property
mendicant friars
Friars should not be confused with monks. Members of the mendicant orders are friars, and include Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Servites and Carmelites.—Leslie Sellers
Leslie SellersSynonyms
Examples of mendicant in a Sentence
Noun
those wretched mendicants on the streets of Calcutta
Recent Examples on the Web
Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 29 Apr. 2023
All these words strike me as vaguely offensive except for mendicant and supplicant.
—Stephen Miller, WSJ, 11 Oct. 2021
But both mendicant and supplicant have a religious connotation.
—Stephen Miller, WSJ, 11 Oct. 2021
The island was a coda of sorts: a place of Christian pilgrimage since the death of a local mendicant, later canonized as St. Cuthbert, in 687.
—Henry Wismayer, Washington Post, 8 Sep. 2021
The fortunes of alphabetical order were further advanced by the growth of mendicant preaching orders.
—Katherine A. Powers, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2020
Francis is the first pope to name himself after the mendicant friar, who renounced a wealthy, dissolute lifestyle to embrace a life of poverty and service to the poor.
—CBS News, 5 Oct. 2020
Created in 2012 by the Dominicans, a Catholic mendicant order, Optic has the goal of ensuring that emerging technologies respect human dignity.
—Rebecca Heilweil, Fortune, 24 Nov. 2019
The convent houses the nearly 800-year-old tomb of Saint Francis, the most poetic of holy men, who thought money was worth less than asses’ dung and inspired a mendicant order.
—The Economist, 7 Sep. 2019
Seyward Darby, Longreads, 5 Apr. 2023
No doubt the traditional tunic and mantle of his mendicant religious order met some standard of austerity when they were adopted in the Middle Ages.
—Nicholas Frankovich, National Review, 2 Jan. 2021
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Noun
In Thank You for Your Servitude, which for my money is the only truly interesting book about the Trump presidency, author Mark Leibovich goes into harrowing detail about how the modern GOP readily turned itself into a gaggle of mendicants to serve Trump on bended knee.
—Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 29 Apr. 2023
All these words strike me as vaguely offensive except for mendicant and supplicant.
—Stephen Miller, WSJ, 11 Oct. 2021
But both mendicant and supplicant have a religious connotation.
—Stephen Miller, WSJ, 11 Oct. 2021
The island was a coda of sorts: a place of Christian pilgrimage since the death of a local mendicant, later canonized as St. Cuthbert, in 687.
—Henry Wismayer, Washington Post, 8 Sep. 2021
The fortunes of alphabetical order were further advanced by the growth of mendicant preaching orders.
—Katherine A. Powers, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2020
Francis is the first pope to name himself after the mendicant friar, who renounced a wealthy, dissolute lifestyle to embrace a life of poverty and service to the poor.
—CBS News, 5 Oct. 2020
Created in 2012 by the Dominicans, a Catholic mendicant order, Optic has the goal of ensuring that emerging technologies respect human dignity.
—Rebecca Heilweil, Fortune, 24 Nov. 2019
The convent houses the nearly 800-year-old tomb of Saint Francis, the most poetic of holy men, who thought money was worth less than asses’ dung and inspired a mendicant order.
—The Economist, 7 Sep. 2019
Adjective
The abrupt appearance and disappearance of the mendicant pilgrim is part of her power.
—Seyward Darby, Longreads, 5 Apr. 2023
No doubt the traditional tunic and mantle of his mendicant religious order met some standard of austerity when they were adopted in the Middle Ages.
—Nicholas Frankovich, National Review, 2 Jan. 2021
Dictionary Entries Near mendicant
Cite this Entry
“Mendicant.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mendicant. Accessed 26 Jan. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
mendicant
noun
men·di·cant
ˈmen-di-kənt 
1
: one who lives by begging
2
: a member of a religious order originally owning neither personal nor community property and living mostly on charitable donations : friar
mendicancy
noun
-kən-sē
mendicant
adjective
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