| / English Dictionary |
BRETHREN
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(plural) the lay members of a male religious order
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("brethren" is a kind of...):
religious order; religious sect; sect (a subdivision of a larger religious group)
Domain usage:
plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)
Context examples:
They exploit for fame or cash the work which has been done by their indigent and unknown brethren.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But the seventh saw Snowdrop, and called all his brethren to come and see her; and they cried out with wonder and astonishment and brought their lamps to look at her, and said, Good heavens! what a lovely child she is!
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
But my good master Bates dying in two years after, and I having few friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
A week in your cells, false brethren, a week of rye-bread and lentils, with double lauds and double matins, may help ye to remembrance of the laws under which ye live.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Every plant, even the smaller ones, curls and writhes to the green surface, twining itself round its stronger and taller brethren in the effort.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He said, “he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions; that, as to myself, it was manifest I had neither the strength nor agility of a common Yahoo; that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather: lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my brethren,” as he called them, “the Yahoos in his country.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
“Have the brethren come?” he asked, in the Anglo-French dialect used in religious houses.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race in general, I considered them, as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
To the believer, clouds of angels and confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising, encouraging, and supporting them.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He could not fail to see that the men with whom he was thrown in contact, rough-tongued, fierce and quarrelsome as they were, were yet of deeper nature and of more service in the world than the ox-eyed brethren who rose and ate and slept from year's end to year's end in their own narrow, stagnant circle of existence.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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