Checking saved dictionary data and trusted language sources. This will stop automatically if a source does not respond.
/nʌn/ · noun
A member of a Christian religious community of women who live by certain vows and usually wear a habit, (Roman Catholicism, specifically) those living together in a cloister..
Thus, when the nuns came to the mission and we saw that instead of murmuring soft blessings and gliding seraphically over the grass in diaphanous habits, they wore smart blouses and skirts and walked, laughed and talked in low twanging tones very much like our own American missionaries did, we were very disappointed.
a Buddhist nun
Why laſt night, as Colonel Kill'em, Sir William Weezy, Lord Frederick Foretop, and I were careleſsly ſliding the Ranelagh round, picking our teeth, after a damn'd muzzy dinner at Boodle's, who ſhould trip by but an abbeſs, well known about town, with a ſmart little nun in her ſuite.
"I mean to inform you," answered the Oxonian, with a grin on his face, "that those three nymphs, who have so much dazzled your optics, are three nuns, and the plump female is Mother .... of great notoriety [...]"
Use nun when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Nun means A member of a Christian religious community of women who live by certain vows and usually wear a habit, (Roman Catholicism, specifically) those living together in a cloister..
Common synonyms include sister, moniale, sistren, cloistress.
Possible antonyms include brother, friar, monk, frater.
Thus, when the nuns came to the mission and we saw that instead of murmuring soft blessings and gliding seraphically over the grass in diaphanous habits, they wore smart blouses and skirts and walked, laughed and talked in low twanging tones very much like our own American missionaries did, we were very disappointed.
FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0
Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.