Jesuit
Americannoun
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Jesuits
plural
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a member of a Roman Catholic religious order Society of Jesus founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1534.
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(often lowercase) a crafty, intriguing, or equivocating person: so called in allusion to the methods ascribed to the order by its opponents.
adjective
noun
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a member of a Roman Catholic religious order (the Society of Jesus ) founded by Saint Ignatius Loyola in 1534 with the aims of defending the papacy and Catholicism against the Reformation and to undertake missionary work among the heathen
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informal (sometimes not capital) a person given to subtle and equivocating arguments; casuist
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of Jesuit
1550–60; < New Latin Jēsuita, equivalent to Latin Jēsu ( s ) + -ita -ite 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
DeMaio grew up in Orange County, attended a Jesuit school in Maryland and graduated from Georgetown University.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 18, 2026
He was sent to a Catholic boarding school in England, but returned to Ireland as a teenager, where by the age of 18 he had begun studying to be a Jesuit priest.
From BBC ● Oct. 18, 2026
He grew up in Kolkata, moving between a convent school and a prestigious Jesuit boys' school where he first discovered music while cleaning instruments in the music room.
From BBC ● Apr. 17, 2026
Based on a novel by Shusaku Endo, a Jesuit named Rodrigues steps on the image of Christ to save the lives of Christian villagers in 17th-century Japan.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026
René Descartes was trained as a Jesuit, and he, too, was torn between the old and the new.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
Yet Mr. Weber showed that Dutch Jesuits deployed the camera obscura as a metaphor in devotional literature and sermons.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
One of his last Facebook posts, earlier this month, as a Chicagoan educated by Jesuits, was, “pope leo XIV is a sout’ sider my friendts. his cassock size is 4XIV.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2025
He was also the first Jesuit to be elected to the throne of St Peter - Jesuits were historically looked on with suspicion by Rome.
From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2025
When he sought initially to become Pope in 2005 some Jesuits breathed a sigh of relief.
From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2025
Following the initial success of the Reformation movement, the Catholic Church was fighting back, notably through the activities of the Jesuits in Austria and the southern German states.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
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