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:
Are the women in Vermeer’s light-filled interiors cryptic embodiments of Collegiant doctrine or secularized Jesuit motifs?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
Jesuit High, an all-boys Catholic school, has a strong college prep program along with a history of sending players to Division 1 programs and even the NFL.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 10, 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
Christ Blessing by Quentin Massys, dating from about 1500, used to hang behind the altar in the community's chapel of Campion Hall, the Jesuit home for research and study at the University of Oxford.
From BBC ● Dec. 8, 2025
Among the first to grapple directly with this question was the Jesuit educator Jose de Acosta, who spent a quarter century in New Spain.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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
Jesuits in Britain said they made the "difficult decision" to evict Mr Renwick in 2021 after "many attempts to engage with him".
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2025
When he sought initially to become Pope in 2005 some Jesuits breathed a sigh of relief.
From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2025
If you need someone to clean up a mess in Catholic education, you call the Jesuits.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2024
But by claiming that the Jesuits dealt in fairy tales while he dealt in facts, Galileo was storing up more trouble for himself in Rome.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
