☼ Concept Map

''suppliant'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''suppliant'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

suppliant - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

suppliant (comparative more suppliant, superlative most suppliant)

  • Entreating with humility; supplicant.
    • ✤ to bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee1
    • ✤ Some plaques formed part of a mosaic that covered human life with its varied scenes of peace and war. Here we have warriors, the Cretan erect, and his darker-skinned enemy prostrate and suppliant.2
    • ✤ Oedipus, King of my country, you can see our ages who are before your door; some it may be too young for such a journey, and some too old, Priests of Zeus such as I, and these chosen young men; while the rest of the people crowd the market-places with their suppliant branches, for the city stumbles towards death, hardly able to raise up its head3
  • Supplying; auxiliary.
    • ✤ *your levy Must be suppliant *4

Noun

suppliant (plural suppliants)

  • One who pleads or requests earnestly.
    • ✤ Synonyms: beseecher, petitioner, supplicant
    • ✤ In reuerence therefore of the hopes vvhich the Grecians haue repoſed in you, and of the preſence of Iupiter Olympius, in vvhoſe Temple here, vve are in a manner ſuppliants to you, receiue the Mitylenians into league, and ayde vs.5
    • ✤ [K]naves in office, partial in the vvork/Of diſtribution; lib’ral of their aid/To clam’rous importunity in rags,/But oft-times deaf to ſuppliants vvho vvould bluſh/To vvear a tatter’d garb hovvever coarſe,/VVhom famine cannot reconcile to filth; […]6
    • ✤ You were not wont to turn young and beautiful suppliants from your office door. What is the real reason of this professional reluctance on your part?7
    • ✤ I touch your beard as a suppliant, embrace your knees, imploring you to have pity on my wretchedness.8

Etymology

From French suppliant, present participle of supplier. Doublet of supplicant.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈsʌpliənt/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a] nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a] nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page 20: ↩

  3. 1928, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, Sophocles’ King Oedipus: A Version of the Modern Stage, London: Macmillan and Co., […], →OCLC: ↩

  4. 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene vii]: ↩

  5. 1629, Thucydides, “The First Booke”, in Thomas Hobbes, transl., Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre […], London: […] Hen[ry] Seile, […], →OCLC, page 52: ↩

  6. 1785, William Cowper, “Book IV. The Winter Evening.”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], →OCLC, page 158: ↩

  7. 1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries: ↩

  8. 1963, Philip Vellacott, transl., Medea, Penguin Classics, translation of original by Euripides, page 39: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •