cordelier means A Franciscan (member of the Order of Friars Minor). It carries an Arena rating of 1348, earned across 9 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, cordelier ranks #984 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #1,289 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words, #1,866 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #1,871 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words.
Why “cordelier” is a great word
A Franciscan friar, so named from the knotted cord worn as a girdle, or a member of the radical French political club of the Revolutionary era that met in a former Cordelier convent. From French *cordelier*, from *corde* ('rope'), referring to the knotted cord girdle worn by Franciscans. Unlike a 'Capuchin,' which denotes a friar of a later, stricter reform branch defined by its hood, or a 'Jacobin,' which signifies a member of the rival, more centralized revolutionary faction, *cordelier* carries a dual resonance of ascetic poverty and incendiary politics. It is the chafe of hemp against rough-spun wool, the austere echo in a vaulted refectory, and that same sacred space later thick with pipe smoke and the clamor for the Rights of Man—a word that binds the discipline of the spirit and the chaos of the street with a single, unyielding strand.
Etymology
French, related to corde (“rope”), from the girdle of knotted cord worn by the Franciscans.
noun
- A Franciscan (member of the Order of Friars Minor)
- A member of the Cordeliers, a French populist club during the French Revolution, which met in an old Cordelier convent in Paris.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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