beghard means One of an association of religious laymen living in semimonastic communities in imitation of the Beguines, and influenced by Albigensian teachings and by the Brethren of the Free Spirit. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why this word is great
BEGHARD — [Noun] A member of a lay religious brotherhood in medieval Flanders and the Rhineland, living a communal, semi-monastic life of prayer, labor, and voluntary poverty. From Medieval Latin *beghardus*, from the root *beg-* (as in Beguine) + the Germanic-derived suffix *-hardus* (equivalent to English -ard, denoting a person characterized by a trait). Unlike a Beguine (which specifically denotes a woman in the parallel, often more accepted sisterhood) or a mendicant (a broad term for any sanctioned begging friar, lacking their settled communal identity), a Beghard belonged to a specific, precarious masculine fellowship. One pictures the roughspun robe smelling of woodsmoke and cheap tallow, the low murmur of Psalms in a Flemish dialect from behind a workshop wall, the calloused hands that worked wool not for profit but for subsistence—a humble, shadowed orbit around the official monastic sun, perpetually bordering on heresy for daring to find God outside the sanctioned orders.
noun
- One of an association of religious laymen living in semimonastic communities in imitation of the Beguines, and influenced by Albigensian teachings and by the Brethren of the Free Spirit.