Jesuit

How to spell jesuit

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce jesuit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jesuit mean?

1. nounA member of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious order known for education and missionary work.
2. adjectiveRelating to the Jesuits or to their schools, traditions, and teaching.

Jesuit in a sentence

• noun

  The college was founded by a jesuit in the seventeenth century.

• adjective

  She received a jesuit education that stressed rigorous debate.

• noun

  He trained as a jesuit before teaching philosophy at the university.

• adjective

  The building still follows the original jesuit design from the old monastery.

Where does jesuit come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the New Latin Jesuita, formed by attaching the suffix -ita, meaning a follower or member of a group, to the name Jesus. It names a member of the Society of Jesus, the Roman Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540 and confirmed by the Pope in 1540 to 1541. English picked the term up in the middle of the 1500s, partly through French jesuite, as the new order spread rapidly through education and missionary work. Because the Jesuits gained a reputation, fairly or not, for subtle and clever argument, the word also took on a second, hostile life meaning a crafty or equivocating person, which is where the adjective 'jesuitical' comes from. The spelling trap lives in the ending: the unstressed -uit looks as though it might be -uet or -wit, and the silent run of vowels does not match the way the word sounds.

How the word is built

• Jesu- (from Jesus)
• -it (member/follower suffix, from Latin -ita)