recluse
/ɹɪˈklus/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.92 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A person who lives in self-imposed isolation or seclusion from the world, especially for religious purposes; a hermit.
Archaic
Example Sentences
- "a recluse monk or hermit"
- "Hermits themſelves are not recluſe enough to ſeclude that ſubtile ſpirit, Vanity: […]"
- "In meditation deep, recluse / From human converse."
- "The recluse in the fable kept a cat to keep off the rats, and then a cow to feed the cat with milk, and a man to keep the cow and so on. My ambitions also grew like the family of the recluse."
- "First, the president’s uncle died in 1985. Kaczynski was publicly revealed as the Unabomber more than a decade later, in 1996, when he was captured; before that, he had lived as a recluse in the Montana wilderness."
- "that day of appearance taken out of the recluse and committed to safe custody"
Etymology
From Old French reclus, past participle of reclure, from Latin reclūdere (“to disclose, to open”), from re- + claudō (“close”).
Origin
- Source language: Old French
Word Breakdown
- Root: reclus, reclūdō
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɹɪˈklus/
Usage
- Archaic
- Obsolete
- American usage
- Transitive verb
Inflected Forms
more recluse (comparative)
most recluse (superlative)
recluses (plural)
recluses (present, singular)
reclusing (participle, present)
reclused (participle, past)
reclused (past)