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Novitiate

noun
1.
The period during which you are a novice (especially in a religious order).  Synonym: noviciate.
2.
Someone who has entered a religious order but has not taken final vows.  Synonym: novice.






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"Novitiate" Quotes from Famous Books



... paying no attention, walked swiftly toward the gate. He had served his novitiate. He would never be afraid again. With cheerful alacrity he dodged the stones flung after him with friendly, erratic aim by the girl upon whom, yesterday afternoon, he had come to ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... of time, in persons accustomed to alcohol, the vascular changes, temporary only in the novitiate, become confirmed and permanent. The bloom on the nose which characterizes the genial toper is the established sign of alcoholic action on the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... circles so widely different from her previous experience of life, and that "she attributed it wholly to her knowledge of social customs and the social atmosphere, as gained from the best society stories." It was in this manner that she served her social novitiate and the result ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... some of the wealthiest families in Florence from placing their daughters in the Carmelite Convent. A nobleman or opulent citizen who had several daughters, would consider it a duty to devote one of them to the service of the church; and the votive girl was most probably compelled to perform her novitiate and take the veil in this renowned establishment. It was essentially the convent patronized by the aristocracy; and no female would be received within its walls save on the payment of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... great chiefs. A candidate came before the lodge in gala fashion, painted, wreathed, and laughing. Leaping into their circle, he joined madly in the rout, and thus made known his desire for admittance. If worthy, he became a servant, and only after proving by a long novitiate his qualities was he given the lowest rank. Then he received the name by which he would be known in the society. He swore to kill his children, if he had any, and crooking his left arm, he struck it with his right hand, and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... speaking, I suppose, of some rule of life, some kind of novitiate to which you had to submit yourself," said Mr. Harland— "Or was it ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... have their purposes in magic—as well as compacts signed with the blood of the self-sold. There was also a dark Egyptian art, of which the knowledge and the efficacy could only be obtained by the novitiate's procuring a voluntary victim—the dearest object to himself and to whom he also was the dearest; {241} and the primary spring of Byron's tragedy lies, I conceive, in a sacrifice of that kind having been performed, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... paintings of this artist were in the Certosa of Florence; none such exist there now. His earliest extant performances, in considerable number, are at Cortona, whither he was sent during his novitiate, and here apparently he spent all the opening years of his monastic life. His first works executed in fresco were probably those, now destroyed, which he painted in the convent of S. Domenico in this city; as a fresco-painter, he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... him in a kneeling posture holding the last fragment of a charred heap of manuscript over the blazing fire. He had made the final sacrifice to God of all that could wed his heart to future worldly honors. In the year 1838 he entered the Christian Brothers at Cork, and after a short novitiate received the habit and the vows by which these holy men consecrate themselves to the service of their Maker and the spiritual welfare of their fellow men. But the splendid genius of the new Brother was not destined ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... survive. Thus is the balance of the race preserved. I myself was one of five hundred, the only one that reached maturity. Yet all were in the same long ribbon coil. The swan that gulped the coil, gulped all but me. I dropped into the brook alone, and there I quietly passed through my novitiate, egg to tadpole, tadpole to toadling, toadling to toad. When my tail was absorbed into my body, I sought a land-retreat. There I have spent my time for twenty years. None of you know it, and none ever ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... inevitable that from that day our intimacy should dwindle into dissolution (though other causes anticipated this natural decay), but I no longer found masturbation a dry and wearisome formula. In my novitiate I was disheartened to find how long it took me to dissociate myself from the contemplative and attach myself to the active form of self-gratification. But I presently found myself committed to the repetition of the act three times a day. On almost the last ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... trousers, he had such a look of smartness and energy that it required no very great amount of discernment to perceive in him a sailor from top to toe. He had, sooner than most, risen superior to the dangers and temptations to which young sailor lads are exposed during the years of their novitiate, and with a break-neck recklessness of disposition he combined such a perfectly cat-like activity, that his superior smartness was recognised even among his comrades. His bearing, it is true, was rather arrogant, and his tongue not the most good-natured; but he was generally ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... carrying Chinese reinforcements from Taku anchorage to Asan Bay to his assistance, seeing that the game was up, he quietly left the Korean capital and made his way overland to North China. That swift, silent journey home ends the period of his novitiate. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... yielded their assent, though somewhat reluctantly, on account of their extreme poverty; and on the 13th November 1802, one week before the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, Anne Catherine entered on her novitiate. At the present day vocations are not so severely tested as formerly; but in her case, Providence imposed special trials, for which, rigorous as they were, she felt she never could be too grateful. ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... of their novitiate, The first real boyhood Grey had ever known. His youth ran clear,—not choked like his Cochituate, In civic pipes, but free and pure alone; Yet knew repression, could himself habituate To having mind and body ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... following among the masses. He took up his residence in a Buddhist monastery; and the ascetic deprivations, the loud prayers and invocations, the supernatural counsels and meetings, were the course of training which every religious devotee adopts as the proper novitiate for those honors based on the superstitious reverence of mankind which are sometimes no inadequate substitute for temporal power and influence, even when they fail to pave the way to their attainment. He left his place ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... Saturday before Polly's novitiate poor Dr. Maybright's troubles began. He had completely forgotten all about his promise to Polly, and was surprised when the little girl skipped into his study after breakfast, with her black frock put on more neatly than usual, her hair well brushed and pushed off her face, and a wonderful ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... handles, but these are quite superfluous except to lift them from the boats, for in the transit to the laboratory the baskets are carried, as almost everything else is carried in Naples, on the head. To the novitiate it seems a striking risk to pile baskets of fragile glass and even more fragile specimens one above another, and attempt to balance the whole on the head, but nothing could be easier, or seemingly more secure, for these experts. Arrived at the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... prepared for a step so extreme; yet he could not but ask himself whether he were willing to accept the conditions involved in remaining. He realized for the first time what the vow of obedience meant. He had received the slight sacrifices involved thus far in his novitiate as right and proper; simple things which had marked his willingness to yield to the authority which by his own choice was above him. Now he said to himself that to continue this life was to become a mere puppet; to give up independence ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... are bought for purposes of prostitution at the age of five or six years fetch about the same price as those that are bought to be singers. During their novitiate they are employed to wait upon the Oiran, or fashionable courtesans, in the capacity of little female pages (Kamuro). They are mostly the children of distressed persons, or orphans, whom their relatives cruelly sell rather than be at the expense ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... ere another sun had set, he had gone to the principal of the Jesuits; told him his whole heart, or as much of it, poor wretch, as he dare tell to himself; and entreated to be allowed to finish his novitiate, and enter the order, on the understanding that he was to be sent at once back to Europe, or anywhere else; "Otherwise," as he said frankly, "he should go mad, even if he were not mad already." The Jesuit, who was a kindly man enough, went to the Holy Office, and settled all with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... to bodily fatigue and danger, frequently in scenes which, although of thrilling interest, are too lengthy for this narrative. It has been our purpose thus far to present Kit Carson undergoing his novitiate. We regard, and we think a world will eventually regard, this extraordinary man as one raised up by Providence to fulfill a destiny of His all-wise decree. It is premature for us, at this stage of our ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... But the hand of God seemed to be over him, and his soul was shaken to its foundations. From that time forward he renounced society and all worldly pleasures. For eight days he went into retreat and prayed fervently. On the ninth day he joined a religious house, the Novitiate of the Capuchins at San Lorenzo. The young soldier, so gay, so handsome, so fond of social admiration, became ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... come buttin' along into the O. K. Restauraw three times a day with the balance of the band, an' Missis Rucker would shorely turn her grub-game for him, for the limit if he so pleased. But still, most likely every gent in camp would maintain doorin' his novitiate a decent distance with this yere stranger; they wouldn't onbuckle an' be drunk with him free an' social like, an' with the bridle off, like pards who has crossed the plains together an' seen extremes. All this, with a chill onto it, a tenderfoot would find himse'f ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... top-knots on their heads, and the spears in their hands, even these turned to stone. And when the blacks returned to their camp long afterwards, when the borah was over, and the boys, who had been made young men, gone out into the bush to undergo their novitiate, each with his solitary guardian, then saw the blacks, their enemies, the Gooeeays, standing round their old camp, as if to attack it. But instead of being men of flesh, they were men of stone—they, their weapons, their waywahs, and all ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker

... has come to an end and loafing has been trampled out, then many a one, who now thinks that mental work is mere chattering, will learn through his novitiate at the desk, that thinking hurts. If he does not feel himself equal to this kneading and rummaging of the brain, he will go back with relief to his workshop; he will neither envy nor despise those who are operative workers with the brain, and will understand, or ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... myself, she received my civilities without embarrassment. I asked the cause of her journey to Amiens, and whether she had any acquaintances in the town. She ingenuously told me that she had been sent there by her parents, to commence her novitiate for taking the veil. Love had so quickened my perception, even in the short moment it had been enthroned, that I saw in this announcement a death-blow to my hopes. I spoke to her in a way that made her at once understand what was passing in my mind; for ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... swimmer, had passed her novitiate, and thoroughly enjoyed a leisurely round of the bay, with as much floating included as Miss Young would allow. To Honor the sea was as a second element. She had been accustomed to it from her babyhood, and was as fearless as any of her ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... physicians are agreed that the preparation of woman for her calling as mother and rearer of children leaves almost everything to be wished. "Man exercises the soldier in the use of his weapons, and the artisan in the handling of his tools; every office requires special studies; even the monk has his novitiate. Woman alone is not trained for her serious duties of mother."[87] Nine-tenths of the maidens who marry enter matrimony with almost utter ignorance about motherhood and the duties of wedlock. The inexcusable shyness, even on the part of mothers, to ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... however, all things were made right in this respect; and, having satisfactorily passed 'bag and hammock drill,' the test of our novitiate, I and my fellow-unfortunates became not only clad like our fellows, but were enrolled amongst the rest of the second-class boys, and appointed to our proper place ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... his own quadrille (cuadrilla), composed of several banderilleros and picadores. Six bulls are usually killed during one corrida (bull-fight), the espadas engaged taking them in turn. The espada must have passed through a trying novitiate in the art at the royal school of bull-fighting, after which he is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... in the little garden of the convent, Father Rumpler said to him: "Mr. McMaster, you begin well—setting fire to a priest." "Oh," answered he, "if I don't set fire to something more than that it will be a pity." These new friends of Isaac had applied to enter the Redemptorist novitiate and they had been accepted. This meant a voyage to Europe, for the congregation had not yet ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... are strong enough to stand this mode of life, they live very long; but it frequently happens that girls who come into this convent, are obliged to leave it from sickness, long before the expiration of their novitiate. I met with the girl whom I had seen take the veil, and cannot say that she looked either well or cheerful, though she assured me, that "of course, in doing the will of God," she was both. There was not much ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... coquettish by nature. The disposition flourishes best in courtly scenes, but it will grow anywhere, ay, and flourish anywhere. It unfortunately requires but little culture; still Helen was in her novitiate. If she had not been so, she would not have cared whether Edward broke his ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... work, Murs des Sauvages Ameriquains compares aux Murs des Premiers Temps, relates chiefly to the Iroquois and Hurons: the basis for his account of the former being his own observations and those of Father Julien Garnier, who was a missionary among them more than sixty years, from his novitiate to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... upon the steps or near the door, and received a severe shock. She was taken up, and removed first, I think, into the church, but soon into the Black Nunnery, which she soon determined to join as a nun; instead, however, of being required to pass through a long novitiate (which usually occupies about two years and a-half, and is abridged only where the character is peculiarly exemplary and devout), she was permitted to take the veil without delay; being declared by God to a priest to be in a state of sanctity. The meaning ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... same Day of the Year ensuing the Relations and Friends of the fair Novitiate meet again in the Chapel of the Nunnery, where the Lady Abbess brings her out, and delivers her to them. Then again is there a Sermon preach'd on the same Subject as at first; which being over, she is brought ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... paths of science. And, further, we do not know if you have a talent for our profession; that must first be proved. Remain for the present true to your studies; at the end of a year, during which time you shall pass your novitiate, we will ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... family leave for their home on the Thames (which has been rebuilt, together with the little church of St. Michael) tomorrow. Anlaf takes his vows as a novice next Sunday, his novitiate will be as short as the rules of our order allow; we shall all then welcome him as ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... to me the engagement, and the post of prioress. I answered, that as to the engagement it was impossible for me, since my vocation was elsewhere. And I could not regularly be the prioress, till after passing through the novitiate, in which they had all served two years before their being engaged. When I should have done as much, I should see how God would inspire me. The prioress replied quite tartly, that if I would ever leave ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... at the head of the criminal justice of Bengal, with all the supple assiduity of which those who possess no valuable art or useful talent are commonly complete masters. Possessing large funds, acquired by his apprenticeship and novitiate in the lowest frauds, he was enabled to lend to this then powerful man, in the several emergencies of his variable fortune, very large sums of money. This great man had been brought down by Mr. Hastings, under the orders of the Court of Directors, upon a cruel charge, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... repertoire,—the classic models of French dramatic literature, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Beaumarchais, etc. The first scholar of each year has the right to appear at once at the Theatre Francais,—a right rarely claimed, as most young actors prefer to go through a novitiate elsewhere to braving the most critical audience in the world before they have acquired the confidence that comes only with habit and success. After he has gained a foothold at this classic theatre, an actor still sees ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... when a vow had sealed his novitiate, no one of the fraternity should exceed him in fervent piety and bodily mortification. Every hour would find him at the altar before the Virgin, missal in hand, and eyes intent on the glittering image. This incessant and unwatched devotion, he calculated, would enable him ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... de Oriol was born at Urgel in Cataluna, August 15, 1639; at the age of nineteen he entered the Jesuit novitiate, and in 1663 joined the Philippine mission. "He was two years rector of Bohol, three of Zebu, and two of Yloylo; seven years vice-provincial, and twice filled that office for Pintados; was two years rector of Cavite, and one year vice-rector ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... a sense of superstition, at any rate where cats are concerned, and a devout lover of "the furred serpent," I may record the last, the complete rite of my initiation at The Spectator office. While I was one day during my novitiate talking over articles and waiting for instructions—or, rather, finding articles for my chiefs to write about, for that very soon became the routine—a large, consequential, not to say stout black Tom-cat slowly ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... let me say that I have nothing to teach you in the way of play. I am in that stage of the novitiate that seems sheer imbecility. When I get a good stroke I stare after it as stout Cortez stared at the Pacific, "with a wild surmise." But it is because I am a bad player that I feel I can be useful ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... speedy entrance into Paradise may be given the disciple. Nor any exact rules, or laws of equation by virtue of which the goal shall be reached. Nor yet may any specific time be correctly estimated in which to serve a novitiate, before final initiation. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... most jealous care over his interests; cruelly punished for a physical defect chargeable to the carelessness of others; a stranger to hope, love, and fear; the victim of a domestic conspiracy; and the novitiate of a profession which he loathed, and to which, in his subsequent years, he did dishonor. His father he had never known, his mother he knew only as his tormentor and oppressor: no tie seems to have bound him to his brother, and up to this hour he had never yet slept one night ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... inception, opening, outset, initiation, indication, incipience, nascency, incipiency, threshold, tyronism, novitiate; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... condemned them to scour and scrub to the last day of life. The clerical brothers, who were nearly all in full orders, enjoyed a more varied existence, being confined to the precincts only during a part of their novitiate, and then sent out at the will of the Superior to preach in the churches of London or the country, and even despatched on expeditions to establish ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... entrance to a better and eternal life, which was the dogma of the Mysteries, death became the symbol of initiation; and hence among the Greeks the same word signified to die, and to be initiated. In the British Mysteries, says Davies (Mythol. of the British Druids), the novitiate passed the river of death in the boat of Garanhir, the Charon of the Greeks; and before he could be admitted to this privilege, it was requisite that he should have been mystically buried, as well as ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... faces—and all those who remained she loved dearly; yet she was leaving them to-day. Already it was time. She had wished to come out into the garden alone for this last walk, and to wear the habit of her novitiate, though she had voluntarily given up the right to it forever. She must go in and dress for the world, as she had not dressed for years which seemed twice their real length. She must go in, and bid them all goodbye—Reverend ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... that I met in this bleak northern land, devoted as every one of them is to his life work, none was more devoted and none was doing a more self-sacrificing work than the Rev. Samuel Milliken Stewart of Fort Chimo. His novitiate as a missionary was begun in one of the little out-port fishing villages of Newfoundland. Finally he was transferred to that fearfully barren stretch among the heathen Eskimos north of Nachvak. Here he and his Eskimo servant gathered ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... influence over the minds of his flock; and Stewart, in his "History of the Highlands," has described him as having essentially contributed to form the character of the Highland soldier, then in the novitiate of his loyalty and efficiency in the national service. In 1776, while stationed with his regiment in Glasgow, he had the freedom of the city conferred on him by the corporation. After discharging the duties ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... administration of revenues, without profession of any kind, without any sort of trade sufficient to employ a peddler, could have, in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months,) amassed treasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not enough to put these gentlemen, in the novitiate of their administration, on their guard, and to call upon them for a strict inquiry, (if not to justify them in a reprobation of those demands without any inquiry at all,) that, when all England, Scotland, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... yielded, though very unwillingly, to her father's insistence, and having passed through her novitiate, had finally taken the veil as a Carmelite of Subiaco, in the year 1841, on the distinct understanding that when her aunt died she was to be abbess in the elder lady's stead. The abbess herself was, indeed, in excellent health and not yet fifty years old, so that ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... maturation, evolution; elaboration, concoction, digestion; gestation, batching, incubation, sitting. groundwork, first stone, cradle, stepping-stone; foundation, scaffold &c (support) 215; scaffolding, echafaudage [Fr.]. [Preparation of men] training &c (education) 537; inurement &c (habit) 613; novitiate; cooking [Preparation of food], cookery; brewing, culinary art; tilling, plowing, [Preparation of the soil], sowing; semination^, cultivation. [State of being prepared] preparedness, readiness, ripeness, mellowness; maturity; un impromptu fait a loisir [Fr.]. [Preparer] preparer, trainer; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal-revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and taste ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... thy novitiate, doest well, verily, to prate of obedience and doctrines," interrupted Father Gianmaria, less severely than he was wont to treat such breaches of etiquette; for Fra Francesco had deep, spiritual, loving eyes, in which an unuttered wonder sometimes seemed to chide, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull



Words linked to "Novitiate" :   period of time, time period, faith, novice, period, religion, religious belief, religious person



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