- a person who dedicates their life to a pursuit of contemplative ideals and practices extreme self-denial or self-mortification for religious reasons.
- a person who leads an austerely simple life, especially one who abstains from the normal pleasures of life or shuns material satisfaction.
- (in the early Christian church) a monk; hermit.
- relating to asceticism, the doctrine that one can reach a high spiritual state through the practice of extreme self-denial or self-mortification.
- rigorously abstinent; austere: an ascetic existence.
- exceedingly strict or severe in religious exercises or self-mortification.
- a person who practises great self-denial and austerities and abstains from worldly comforts and pleasures, esp for religious reasons
- (in the early Christian Church) a monk
- rigidly abstinent or abstemious; austere
- of or relating to ascetics or asceticism
- intensely rigorous in religious austerities
