strigolnik means A follower of a Russian Christian sect that appeared in the mid-14th century.
Why “strigolnik” is a great word
A follower of a heretical Russian Christian sect that emerged in the mid-fourteenth century, protesting against clerical corruption and simony. From Russian стригольник (strigolʹnik), derived from the root strig- ("to cut, shear, trim"), likely referring to a trade such as shearer or barber, or perhaps a ritual tonsure associated with the group. Unlike the Molokan (an eighteenth-century sect that rejected church ritual itself) or the Old Believer (a seventeenth-century schismatic resisting liturgical reforms), the strigolnik was an urban, fourteenth-century protest, a specific and early cry against the venality of priests. It is the whisper of dissent in a Novgorod marketplace, the refusal of coins to a corrupt deacon, the self-administered sacrament in a dim cellar—a brief, sheared-off moment of purity before the long winter of orthodoxy reasserted itself.
Etymology
Russian стригольник (strigolʹnik)
noun
- A follower of a Russian Christian sect that appeared in the mid-14th century.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- strannik 60% match — A religious pilgrim in Russia. vs strigolnik →
- molokan 60% match — A member of a Christian sect that evolved from "Spiritual Christian" Russian peasants who refused to obey the Russian Orthodox Church, beginning in the 1600s in the Russian Empire as an indigenous adaptation of the Protestant movement from Europe. Named for their heresy of eating (including dairy foods), instead of fasting, during Lent. vs strigolnik →
- bogomil 56% match — A member of a dualist Christian sect which flourished in the Balkans during the 10th to 15th centuries and was characterized by resistance to the state and church authorities. vs strigolnik →
- strigoi 55% match — In Balkan folklore, the troubled souls of the dead rising from the grave. vs strigolnik →
- borborite 55% match — A member of an ancient libertine Gnostic sect, said to be descended from the Nicolaitans. vs strigolnik →
- staroobriadtsi 54% match — The Old Believers. vs strigolnik →
- bogomilist 54% match — An adherent of Bogomilism; a Bogomil. vs strigolnik →
- strigilator 54% match — Any of various myrmecophiles that feed on the oily secretions on the bodies of ants. vs strigolnik →