CONVENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does convent mean? 

• CONVENT (noun)
  The noun CONVENT has 2 senses:

1. a religious residence especially for nuns

2. a community of people in a religious order (especially nuns) living together

  Familiarity information: CONVENT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONVENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A religious residence especially for nuns

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("convent" is a kind of...):

cloister; religious residence (residence that is a place of religious seclusion (such as a monastery))

Meronyms (parts of "convent"):

cell; cubicle (small room in which a monk or nun lives)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "convent"):

abbey (a convent ruled by an abbess)

nunnery (the convent of a community of nuns)

Derivation:

conventual (of communal life sequestered from the world under religious vows)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A community of people in a religious order (especially nuns) living together

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("convent" is a kind of...):

community (a group of people living in a particular local area)

Holonyms ("convent" is a part of...):

religious order; religious sect; sect (a subdivision of a larger religious group)

Derivation:

conventual (of communal life sequestered from the world under religious vows)

 Context examples 

He wishes her to go into a convent, but she won't hear of it, and after a touching appeal, is about to faint when Roderigo dashes in and demands her hand.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of religieuses would worship their director.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

His endowments of this spot alone might at any time have placed him high among the benefactors of the convent.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

He quickly arranged with the Turk that if the latter should find a favourable opportunity for escape before Felix could return to Italy, Safie should remain as a boarder at a convent at Leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely Arabian, he hastened to Paris and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the law, hoping to free De Lacey and Agatha by this proceeding.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I then returned: You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

From the dining-room, of which, though already seen, and always to be seen at five o'clock, the general could not forgo the pleasure of pacing out the length, for the more certain information of Miss Morland, as to what she neither doubted nor cared for, they proceeded by quick communication to the kitchen—the ancient kitchen of the convent, rich in the massy walls and smoke of former days, and in the stoves and hot closets of the present.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her fortune.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Many were the inquiries she was eager to make of Miss Tilney; but so active were her thoughts, that when these inquiries were answered, she was hardly more assured than before, of Northanger Abbey having been a richly endowed convent at the time of the Reformation, of its having fallen into the hands of an ancestor of the Tilneys on its dissolution, of a large portion of the ancient building still making a part of the present dwelling although the rest was decayed, or of its standing low in a valley, sheltered from the north and east by rising woods of oak.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)