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:
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
In 1990, after almost five decades of shuttling among temporary locations, the painting was finally installed in Rimini’s new Museo della Città, a renovated Jesuit convent.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 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
At the Jesuit church, I picked up a booklet I had also noticed on Dean Gandy’s coffee table—For Men of Good Will, by Father Robert Guste.
From "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin
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
Each came from religious movements long controversial in the Catholic world — the progressive Jesuits for Francis, the conservative Opus Dei for Gomez.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 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
"It's time to go forward," he asserts, quoting Father Frans, who he says inspired him to join the Jesuits.
From BBC ● Dec. 17, 2024
The Carmelites are another Catholic order, like the Jesuits.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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.
