recluse
nounEtymology From Old French reclus, past participle of reclure, from Latin reclūdere (“to disclose, to open”), from re- + claudō (“close”).
1
Archaic A person who lives in self-imposed isolation or seclusion from the world, especially for religious purposes; a hermit.
- The recluse in the fable kept a cat to keep off the rats, and then a cow to feed the cat with milk, and a man to keep the cow and so on. My ambitions also grew like the family of the recluse.1927-29, M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai, Part I, Chapter xv
- First, the president’s uncle died in 1985. Kaczynski was publicly revealed as the Unabomber more than a decade later, in 1996, when he was captured; before that, he had lived as a recluse in the Montana wilderness.2025 July 16, Daniel Dale, “Fact check: Trump tells fictional story about his uncle and the Unabomber”, in CNN, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2025:
- that day of appearance taken out of the recluse and committed to safe custody1563 March 30 (Gregorian calendar), John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes, […], London: […] Iohn Day, […], →OCLC:
4
Archaic See also Thesaurus:recluse
- Synonyms
- aloner, anchoret, anchorite, eremite, hermit, Miller of Dee, monk, recluse, shut-in, solitary, sullen
- Derived terms
- brown recluse, nonrecluse, recluse spider, reclusion, reclusive, Texas recluse
- Related terms
- loner, anthrophobe, outcast
- Hypernyms
- person