Word of the Day Archive
Sunday June 12, 2005
hermitage \HUHR-muh-tij\ , noun:
1. The habitation of a hermit or group of hermits.
2. A monastery or abbey.
3. A secluded residence; a retreat; a hideaway.
4. (Capitalized) A palace in St. Petersburg, now an art museum.
She had left her father's surviving subjects to manage as best they could and climbed even higher in search of the lonely sanctity she had always craved. Now Rose requested her to keep an eye open for the twins who would pass within a few miles of her abandoned hermitage.
-- Alice Thomas Ellis, The Sin Eater
When it grows cold, we return to the hermitage where I am ending my days.
-- Christophe Bataille, Hourmaster (translated by Richard Howard)
Your oath I will not trust, but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world.
-- Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage.
-- Richard Lovelace, "To Althea from Prison"
Hermitage is from Old French hermitage, from heremite, "hermit," ultimately from Greek eremites, "dwelling in the desert," from eremia, "desert," from eremos, "solitary; desolate."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for hermitage
