Sunday Word: Anchorite
anchorite [ang-kuh-rahyt]
adjective:
a person who has retired to a solitary place for a life of religious seclusion; a hermit
Examples:
But Hardulph would not have been a hermit in the colloquial sense; he would have been an anchorite, meaning that he would have been anchored to the church and may have had disciples, Simons explained. (Lindsey Bever, English cave may have ties to king-turned-saint and Viking invasion, archaeologists say, The Washington Post, July 2021)
In the 1970s, commercial plywood caught Judd's eye and he used it in a suite of boxy sculptures that look like a cross between shipping containers and anchorite cells. (Holland Cotter, The Many Moods and Pleasures of Donald Judd's Objects, The New York Times, February 2020)
His three children were brought up in his brother's house, and he himself lived the life of an anchorite in the little cabin - a life of fancy strained to the utmost, of passionate prayers and unfathomable mystic contemplations. (Eliza Orzeszkowa, An Obscure Apostle: A Dramatic Story)
The new comer, an anchorite, who for all clothing wore a shirt-shaped coat of brown undressed linen, and a sheep-skin, examined the wound carefully, and laid some herbs on it, murmuring meanwhile some pious texts. (Georg Ebers, Homo Sum)
(The Hermit by Gerrit Dou, 1670 - click to enlarge)
Origin:
mid-15c, 'hermit, recluse, one who withdraws from the world for religious reasons,' especially in reference to the Christian hermits of the Eastern deserts in the two centuries after c300 CE, from Medieval Latin anchorita, Late Latin anchoreta, from Greek anakhorētēs, literally 'one who has retired,' agent noun from anakhorein 'to retreat, go back, retire (from battle, the world, etc.),' from ana 'back' + khōrein 'withdraw, give place,' from khōros 'place, space, free space, room' (from PIE root ghē- 'to release, let go; be released'). It replaced Old English ancer, from Late Latin anchoreta. (Online Etymology Dictionary)