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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
celibate
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He had remained celibate for three years before he met Hannah.
▪ She was not prepared for a celibate life in the Church.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A celibate period followed, he says, before he started making out with men.
▪ But Jim had been living a celibate life for nearly eighteen years and planned to continue doing so.
▪ It costs much less to support celibate clergy than ministers or rabbis with spouses and children.
▪ It was unsettling to know that a panel of celibate strangers were scrutinizing her most intimate affairs.
▪ The celibate person is more available, not less so.
▪ The priest must be celibate in order to purify himself for the handling of the sacred in the sacrament.
▪ The result was that Dahomean kings were very fecund, while ordinary Dahomean men were often celibate and barren.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Celibate

Celibate \Cel"i*bate\, a. Unmarried; single; as, a celibate state.

Celibate

Celibate \Cel"i*bate\, n. [L. aelibatus, fr. caelebs unmarried, single.]

  1. Celibate state; celibacy. [Obs.]

    He . . . preferreth holy celibate before the estate of marriage.
    --Jer. Taylor.

  2. One who is unmarried, esp. a bachelor, or one bound by vows not to marry.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
celibate

1610s, "state of celibacy" (especially as mandated to clergy in the Catholic church) from French célibat (16c.), from Latin caelibatus (see celibacy). This was the only sense until early 19c. The adjective meaning "unmarried, sworn to remain single" is recorded from 1825. As a noun, one who is sworn to such a condition, from 1838.

Wiktionary
celibate

a. 1 Not married. 2 (context by extension English) Abstaining from sexual relations and pleasures. n. 1 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. 2 (context obsolete English) A celibate state; celibacy.

WordNet
celibate
  1. adj. abstaining from sexual intercourse; "celibate priests" [syn: continent]

  2. n. an unmarried person who has taken a religious vow of chastity

Usage examples of "celibate".

They stay celibate and they have to be highly educated and trained in things like philosophy and theology as well.

Making them celibate, as the new Gregorian reforms demanded, was biologically equivalent to killing them.

We stayed celibate for the night, and Krystyana had leg cramps until dawn.

The thing it makes me finish writing: how that celibate, as if only waiting for the disastrous chance, set to work living like there was no tomorrow.

After a few more minutes of unsuccessfully trying not to think of what lay in store for a celibate nun in a meat show, I trudged over to the Man of Many Colors, who was lying very still on one of the cots, while the Human Lizard and the India Rubber Man took turns rubbing his wrists vigorously and mopping sweat from his forehead.

Charlie, the celibate, did not experience this big step as we men of the world do.

Jovinian polemicizes against Manichaeans, not against celibates generally, is intriguing.

Maidens of Saille was a religious order of celibate women who ran the sole orphanage.

Lamaism, especially in its later period, when a celibate monkhood became an instrument of government, was the use of the principle of reincarnation as a form of spiritual and political succession.

Madelgarde claims that Charles has been living a celibate life ever since the plot to unthrone him was discovered.

To such an extent did the priests of the Algonkin tribes who lived near Manhattan Island carry their austerity, such uncompromising celibates were they, that it is said on authority as old as 1624, that they never so much as partook of food prepared by a married woman.

Indeed, the Rappite community survived its founder, lasting one hundred years, and this was despite the fact that from around the time he sold Harmonie to Owen, Rapp required his followers to be celibate.

Besides, as a confrere Knight of the Holy Trinity you are supposed to be celibate and not think such things.

About every six or eight months, I run into a man who astounds me sexually, but between escapades, I'm celibate, which I don't think is any big deal.

Ludwig had never been to a whore and had no intention of starting, but others, like poor Ulli, bemoaned their fate as celibates.