postulant means A person seeking admission to a religious order. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why this word is great
POSTULANT — [Noun] A candidate petitioning for admission to a religious order or submitting a formal request. From French postulant, from Latin postulant-, the present participle stem of postulare ("to ask for, demand, claim"). Unlike a "novice," who has already crossed the threshold into a period of probation, or an "applicant," a secular term of general and bloodless seeking, a postulant occupies the charged limbo of the asking itself. It is the figure in plain clothes kneeling at the heavy oak door; the scent of beeswax on stone floors in a corridor one is not yet permitted to walk alone; the silence that stretches after the final interview—the self held in abeyance, a life suspended in the quiet air of a single, unanswered question.
noun
- A person seeking admission to a religious order.“After their six-month postulancies are over and they have mastered all the chants and books of monastic regulations, the postulants are finally ready to ordain as novice monks […]”
- A person who submits a petition for something; a petitioner.“But when the three postulants returned with Sabine it was clear that the results had been far from satisfactory, perhaps because of the massive potations of the old lady.”