Hermit

How to spell hermit

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hermit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hermit mean?

1. nounA person who chooses to live alone and avoid contact with other people.

Hermit in a sentence

• The old hermit lived in a cabin far from the nearest village.

• After retiring, he became something of a hermit and rarely answered the phone.

Where does hermit come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek eremites, meaning 'a person of the desert', built on eremos, which literally meant 'lonely', 'deserted', or 'an uninhabited place'. It described the early Christian ascetics who withdrew into the Egyptian and Syrian wilderness to live alone in prayer. Latin took the word in as eremita, and it then passed into Old French as (h)ermite, where an initial 'h' was added that the original Greek never had. English borrowed it in the 1100s and 1200s, and that French-added 'h' is exactly why we write the silent-looking start of hermit today. The same eremos root also gives us 'eremite', a more formal literary word for the very same solitary dweller.

How the word is built

• herm- (from Greek eremos: desert, solitary)
• -it (agent ending, one who dwells)