castellite
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A religious group in western North Carolina during the late 19th century. Mormon missionaries encountered them and found that they were enemies, not converts.
Example Sentences
- "Of late years Mormon missionaries from Utah have reaped a rich harvest in this region, and in parts of Swain and Haywood counties a peculiar sect, known as Castellites, has arisen whose exercises seem to be of a highly emotional character, as it is a common remark that every one who joins the Castellites goes crazy."
- "Life here was not easy. For the first couple of years, Castellites depended heavily on supplies and support from the people of Fredericksburg, who had problems enough of their own. A round trip to Fredericksburg—about 50 miles—took 4 days."
Etymology
Possibly from a very brief 19th-century Mormon settlement in Castell, Texas, which, like all Mormon communities, sent out missionaries. Identifying "Utah" as the source of the Castellite missionaries in the quote below may have been based on the common contemporaneous assumption that all Mormons were based in Utah.
Word Breakdown
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Religion.