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Ritual shaving of the head
Answer for the clue "Ritual shaving of the head ", 7 letters:
tonsure
Alternative clues for the word tonsure
Word definitions for tonsure in dictionaries
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Word definitions in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
noun EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS ▪ And if you want funny peculiar, simply gaze upon Thierry Boutsen's reverse-flip bird's-nest tonsure . ▪ He had others in his grizzled russet tonsure , dropped from the higher branches as the wind stirred them. ▪ He was balding ...
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
Tonsure is the practice of cutting or shaving some or all of the hair on the scalp , as a sign of religious devotion or humility. The term originates from the Latin word tōnsūra (meaning "clipping" or "shearing") and referred to a specific practice in medieval ...
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., "shaving of the head or part of it," especially as a religious rite, from Anglo-French tonsure (mid-14c.), Old French tonsure "ecclesiastical tonsure; sheep-shearing" (14c.), from Latin tonsura "a shearing, clipping," from tonsus, past participle ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. The bald patch resulting from being tonsured. vb. (context Christianity English) To subject to the often ritual shave of the crown of the head as a sign of humility and one's religious vocation. Some tonsures were more dramatic than others, leaving only ...
Usage examples of tonsure.
Like the rest of them, he wore riding leathers and a leather brigandine, his tonsure covered by a leather cap and with no other sign of his calling visible.
The curate of SaintSamuel, the Abbe Josello, presented me to Monsignor Correre, Patriarch of Venice, who gave me the tonsure, and who, four months afterwards, by special favour, admitted me to the four minor orders.
As was his usual wont, Faelan was immaculately turned out, his black habit neatly brushed, his cowled scapular falling in precise folds, his tonsure gleaming newly shaven on his bowed head.
Tanaburs, dressed in a dirty grey robe embroidered with hares and crescent moons, stood in the entranceway and raised both hands above his tonsured head.
Sansum was always a thin man, short of stature, with a sharp, clean-shaven chin and a receding forehead above which his tonsured hair stuck up stiff and black like a thorn hedge, though the hedge had been more closely trimmed on top than at its edges and thus had left him with a pair of black bristly tufts that stuck out just above his ears.
Bedwin pushed the hood away from his white tonsured hair and scratched in his beard for a troublesome louse.
Arthur said, and when Sansum just shook his tonsured head, Arthur touched the hilt of Excalibur.
Sansum was in a black gown -which, like his stiffly tonsured hair, was whitened with stone dust.
His mouse-like face with its stiffly tonsured brush offered us a smirk that was intended as a smile.
All that I remembered, just as I remembered being lifted up, screaming for my mother who could not help me, and I remembered being carried through the twin lines of fire where the warriors danced and the women moaned, and I remembered Tanaburs holding me high above his tonsured head as he walked to the edge of a pit that was a black circle in the earth surrounded by fires whose flames burned bright enough to illuminate the blood-smeared tip of a sharpened stake that protruded from the bowels of the round dark pit.
There was a gaggle of tonsured priests waiting for them, in addition to a dozen or more Church knights and five women, all but one of them younger than Adrina.
He pointed to a parchment scroll waiting on the small, slanted desk, a tonsured scribe holding out an inked quill expectantly.
Beside her was a man wearing a brown cassock, his tonsured head so polished it reflected the candles.
Their tonsured heads and pale skin made it hard to tell one from the other.
It was opened a few moments later by Lord Draco, who took in the fallen guards and the tonsured priests with a glance, reaching for his sword with a speed that belied his age.