Definitions for tonsures

• Definition
• Anagrams (340)

tonsures ton·sure

Spelling: [ton-sher]

IPA: /ˈtɒn ʃər/

Tonsures is a 8 letter English word. It's valid Scrabble word worth 7 points. It's valid Words with friends word worth 9 points.

You can make 340 anagrams from letters in tonsures (enorsstu).

Definitions for tonsures

noun

1. the act of cutting the hair or shaving the head.
2. the shaving of the head or of some part of it as a religious practice or rite, especially in preparation for entering the priesthood or a monastic order.
3. the part of a cleric's head, usually the crown, left bare by shaving the hair.
4. the state of being shorn.

verb (used with object)

1. to confer the ecclesiastical tonsure upon.
2. to subject to tonsure.

Origin of tonsures

1350-1400; Middle English Latin tōnsūra a shearing, equivalent to tōns(us) (past participle of tondēre to shear, clip, shave) + -ūra -ure

Examples for tonsures

It looks like a skull cap, and is an exact inversion of the tonsure.

Although he was an archbishop he had only the first tonsure.

We have as much to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk.

The tonsure of his hair, the cut of his moccasins, his war-paint, enabled Carlos to tell this.

But the tonsure had then been very small, hardly larger than a penny.

This one wears the tonsure, the other a hood; this a cloak, that a robe.

In the Old Testament it is permitted to no priest to wear the tonsure.

He received the tonsure and the minor orders at the age of seventeen.

The other, although in citizen's dress, he saw by the tonsure was a priest.

The mark of his tonsure was next removed, and that with great cruelty.