noun
definition
One who is not married, especially one who has taken a religious vow not to get married, usually because of being a member of a religious community.
definition
A celibate state; celibacy.
verb
definition
To practice celibacy
adjective
definition
Not married.
definition
(by extension) Abstaining from sexual relations and pleasures.
example
Members of religious communities sometimes take vows to remain celibate.
Examples of celibate in a Sentence
There is a trend among religious teenages to sign a pledge to remain celibate until they marry.
She stayed celibate, never dating, in order to maintain her cover.
The parochial clergy are celibate in so far as they must be married when appointed, but if left widowers may not marry again.
Catholic priests are required to be celibate as part of their vows.
He was celibate while she was very much not.
Catholicism generally spreads from parent to child but celibate priests play a role too.
A number of widows and maidens met together in the house of Marcella to study the Scriptures with him; he taught them Hebrew, and preached the virtues of the celibate life.
They came accompanied by a band of Roman maidens vowed to live a celibate life in a nunnery in Palestine.
His mind, strongly imbued with the theocratic ideal, saw more clearly than any other the enormous increase of influence which would accrue to a strictly celibate body of clergy, separated by their very ordination from the strongest earthly ties; and no statesman has ever pursued with greater energy and resolution a plan once formulated.
You won't give it me, you little celibate simpleton.
Now in 18 B.C. Augustus carried the Leges Tuliae, which offered inducements to marriage and imposed disabilities upon the celibate.
According to this authority Jovinian in 388 was living at Rome the celibate life of an ascetic monk, possessed a good acquaintance with the Bible, and was the author of several minor works, but, undergoing an heretical change of view, afterwards became a self-indulgent Epicurean and unrefined sensualist.
Among the Dravidians a cobra which is accidentally killed is burned like a human being; no one would kill one intentionally; the serpent-god's image is carried in an annual procession by a celibate priestess.
The ecclesiastical importance of the monks in the various branches of the Orthodox Church lies in this, that as bishops must be celibate, whereas the parochial clergy must be married, the bishops are all recruited from the monks.
In Travancore a serpent-god is the property of a family, the priests of a temple; the eldest female carries the image at the festal processions and must lead a celibate life (Oldham, 153 seq.).
It can scarcely be denied that the Roman Catholic clergy have always owed much of their influence to their celibacy, and that in many cases this influence has been most justly earned by the celibate's devotion to an unworldly ideal.
His form of religious sentiment was not evangelical or mystical, any more than it was ascetic or ceremonial or dogmatic. As regards one of the accepted doctrines of his own church, the excellence of the celibate life, of poverty, and of elaborate obedience to a rule, he no doubt was a strong dissident; but the evidence that, as a Christian, he was unorthodox, that he was even a heretical or latitudinarian thinker in regard to those doctrines which the various Christian churches have in common, is not merely weak, it is practically nonexistent.
The tendency to a celibate clergy increases, together with other romanizing usages, promoted by the papal legate in Beirut, the Catholic missioners, and the higher native clergy who are usually educated in Rome or at St Sulpice.
A knightly celibate, his stainless life, his ardour, caused him to be termed a Yankee Galahad; a pure and simple heart was laid bare to those who loved him in " My Psalm," " My Triumph " and " An Autograph."
The lower clergy were more amenable; the two hundred who alone are said to have been ejected should perhaps be multiplied by five; but even so they were not one in seven, and these seven were clergy who had been promoted in Marys reign, or who bad stood the celibate and other tests of 1553-1554.
They devote themselves to the celibate life, have property in common, and observe a common rule of prayer, fellowship and work.
He became leader of the so-called sect of the Hieracites, an ascetic society from which married persons were excluded, and of which one of the leading tenets was that only the celibate could enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Church will however insist that all of its own clergy remain celibate once in a civil partnership.
He is vowed to the cult, and becomes celibate for at least duration of this stage.
It's tantamount, really, to imagining Bill Clinton as celibate, William Hague as hip or Jackie Collins as a Bronte sister.
Even although the episcopal organization was retained, the conception of " tradition," of the conciliar powers, of the " characters" of the priest, of the celibate life, of purgatory, of " good works," &c. - all these serve clearly to differentiate the teaching of the English Church before and after the Reformation.
You wo n't give it me, you little celibate simpleton.
It 's tantamount, really, to imagining Bill Clinton as celibate, William Hague as hip or Jackie Collins as a Bronte sister.
The monks were committed to a celibate lifestyle, filled with meditation and prayer.
Perry went on to say that she would "rather die" than be celibate for an entire year.
Though she claims she loves to be the center of attention and party like a rockstar she leads a self-imposed celibate lifestyle.
We appreciate your constant encouragement and your steadfast upholding of the value of celibate chastity as normative for the ordained priesthood.