novitiate

First attested in 1517; either borrowed from Middle French noviciat, novitiat or from Medieval Latin noviciātus, novitiātus (“a novitiate”), from Latin novicius, novitius + -ātus (see -ate (forming nouns denoting a rank or office)), from novus (“new”). Sense 1 is not attested in cognates.

• IPA^(key): /nəˈvɪʃi.ət/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: no‧vi‧ti‧ate

novitiate (plural novitiates)

1. A novice.
2. The period during which a novice of a religious order undergoes training.
   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter X, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 214:

     Three weeks after the departure of the Mandevilles, all Naples flocked to witness the profession of a young Englishwoman, a dispensation having been obtained for the novitiate.

3. The place where a novice lives and studies.

• “novitiate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “novitiate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “novitiate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• evitation