LEPER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does leper mean? 

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

1. a person afflicted with leprosy

2. a pariah who is avoided by others

  Familiarity information: LEPER used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LEPER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person afflicted with leprosy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

lazar; leper

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

diseased person; sick person; sufferer (a person suffering from an illness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A pariah who is avoided by others

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

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

castaway; Ishmael; outcast; pariah (a person who is rejected (from society or home))

 Context examples 

Next, he saw the girl in the leper refuge and remembered it was for love of him that she had let him go.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Her husband developed some hateful qualities; or shall we say that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile?

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Pulling her beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out:—"Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgment Day."

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

He had had the fever in a secret colony of thirty lepers on one of the Hawaiian Islands.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I never dreamed of lepers.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)