Did you know?
If you’ve been refraining from adding ascetic to your vocabulary, it’s time to let your hair down and live a little! In other words, be the opposite of ascetic. Ascetic comes from askētikos, a Greek adjective meaning “laborious,” and its earliest meaning in English implies the labor involved in abstention from pleasure, comfort, and self-indulgence as a spiritual discipline. These days, ascetic is also used to describe anyone or anything demonstrating marked restraint, plainness, or simplicity, even when no appeals to the divine or spiritual are attached, making it not unlike another adjective with connections to ancient Greece: spartan.
Examples of ascetic in a Sentence
Tom Harpole, Air & Space, December 1999/January 2000
By Hollywood standards, Calley's career path may seem enigmatic, but then, so is his personality. If Mark Canton, the previous Sony president, was the boastful, Armani-clad big spender, Calley is downright ascetic, a man who disdains Hollywood profligacy.
—Peter Bart, GQ, August 1997
He converted to Catholicism and, after a long period of intense self-questioning, became a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, which, at the time, was as ascetic and demanding as any monastery of the Middle Ages.
—Julius Lester, Falling Pieces of the Broken Sky, 1990
Gregory Feifer, Foreign Affairs, 8 Aug. 2016
Adams, running for office, made gestures at his own ascetic habits, passing himself off as a vegan.
—Eric Lach, The New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2024
Though Johnson’s ascetic yet exorbitant lifestyle falls on the extreme end of the spectrum, methodically tracking personal biometrics — from daily nutritional macros to the quality of sleep — has gone mainstream through tech wearables from brands like Apple, Oura and Fitbit.
—Jacqui Palumbo, CNN, 14 Oct. 2024
She was especially drawn to the Cathars, a medieval sect whose ascetic practices spoke to her own quest for disembodiment, as did their martyrdom.
—Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Ascetic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ascetic. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
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