(a.) Extremely rigid in self-denial and devotions; austere; severe.
(n.) In the early church, one who devoted himself to a solitary and contemplative life, characterized by devotion, extreme self-denial, and self-mortification; a hermit; a recluse; hence, one who practices extreme rigor and self-denial in religious things.
Example Sentences:
(1) Famously ascetic, teetotal and vegetarian, he meditates, practises yoga and shuns the trappings of office.
(2) There are several basic structures upon which anorexia nervosa could develop: hostility between mother and daughter, feministic protest, abandonnism, the ascetic structure, the reluctance against the being-thrown-on-the-world, asw.
(3) As Obama put it himself, decades later, "I was leading an ascetic existence, way too serious for my own good".
(4) Pitt says Malick is nothing like the ascetic monk he's often imagined to be.
(5) But the other point is that unilateral opting out might mean you end up living a somewhat ascetic life.
(6) Now, it's all too easy to portray the average politician as a policy-wonk fed since the age of 14 on position papers on social policy and party outreach, professionally married to the job, ascetically weaned day and night on the company of his or her fellow party workers and political researchers, never seeing daylight, never watching telly, never having any cultural development outside whatever serves their policy purview.
(7) He is described as ascetic, highly disciplined and unfazed by the prospect of violence.
(8) These studies (2, 3, 5, 6) have demonstrated that the high IgE responses induced in low responder mice can be substantially diminished, and even abolished, by passively transfusing serum or ascetic fluid from donor mice previously inoculated with mycobacterial-containing complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA).
(9) (Because obviously, no one minds if you win or lose a game of football – and at the full-time whistle, after meditating for a while, the players pool their wages with the fans, before shyly retiring to their modest homes and ascetic lifestyles.)
(10) They are both people who appeal to better human values.” The Dalai Lama leads an ascetic life, rising before dawn to meditate and spending much of his time reading, thinking and taking long walks before retiring to bed at about 8.30pm.
(11) We’re approaching a point where a significant number of people want to change.” Brand is hardly an ascetic, but he is learning about self-denial.
(12) But Mr Putin has ended that disarray and rehabilitated the KGB as the embodiment of the ascetic, incorruptible public service.
(13) Overshadowed by his father, competent but underwhelming as a minister and shadow minister, high-minded and ascetic in his habits, Benn had seemed set to go through a political life without leaving a great mark.
(14) It is the religious aspects of enigmatic Persia that helped put an 80-year-old exiled ascetic at the head of state 30 years ago, then the charismatic cleric Khatami in office 12 years ago, the honest son of a blacksmith – Ahmedinejad – four years ago, and the same yesterday.
(15) Kafka was slim and underweight throughout his life and showed an ascetic attitude and abjuration of physical enjoyment and pleasure (fasting, vegetarianism, sexual abstinence, emphasis on physical fitness).
(16) Takao is still considered an important religious site, so don't be surprised to find yourself sharing a trail with ascetic Buddhists on their way to pray at Yakuo-in temple or cleanse themselves beneath the freezing waterfalls of Biwa-daki or Hebi-daki.
(17) He likened himself to an ascetic and a house cat and said he rarely left the house, spending most of his days surfing the internet – though visitors have brought him piles of books.
(18) From the 9th century, Sufi ascetics wandered the Islamic world, attracting followers to their gentle form of mystical Islam (the word Sufi is often thought to have come from suuf - wool - from the woollen garments the holy men wore).
(19) In the pre-State era, Israeli society displayed an "ascetic" orientation with emphasis on austerity and egalitarianism.
(20) In the moment of victory Murray dropped his racket and turned, mouth agape, towards the nearest section of the crowd – by happy coincidence also the press box – before crumpling to his knees on Centre Court, overcome at the end point of a gruellingly ascetic, occasionally obsessive journey towards an unassailable career high.
Bucolic
Definition:
(a.) Of or pertaining to the life and occupation of a shepherd; pastoral; rustic.
(n.) A pastoral poem, representing rural affairs, and the life, manners, and occupation of shepherds; as, the Bucolics of Theocritus and Virgil.
Example Sentences:
(1) In his 1934 work English Journey, Priestley spoke of three Englands: the so-called "real, enduring England", which spoke to Boyle's bucolic "Jerusalem" opening with its maypoles and cricket, maids and mummery.
(2) Listening to Fleet Foxes, it seemed inconceivable that anyone had ever mocked the acoustic and the bucolic.
(3) Could the typical journey of the modern pint – a week-long trek from cow to fridge via tankers, processing plants, distribution hubs and supermarkets – be replaced by a bucolic idyll of farmers milking and bottling before delivering, all within 12 hours, as Our Cow Molly does?
(4) I n the spring of 1945,” says the narrator, over bucolic springtime shots of the German countryside, “the allies advancing into the heart of Germany came to Bergen-Belsen.
(5) Michael shared with Sebald a passion for East Anglia, settling with his wife Anne File (the poet Anne Beresford, whom he married in 1951) into a bucolic existence surrounded by fruit rees, especially apple trees.
(6) After all, on old MacDonald’s bucolic farm the cows grazed contentedly on verdant fields.
(7) Even in his most innocent work, My Neighbour Totoro , a film in which there are no evil characters and no apparent conflict, the threat of a sick mother's death hangs over the bucolic idyll of its two young sisters.
(8) He also imagined himself sitting on a grassy knoll in Poland, a country he had never visited, surrounded by rolling hills as dawn broke over the roof of the world on 26 May to reveal not a bucolic scene but the reality of his position – perched over a white abyss.
(9) Barack and Michelle Obama’s life after the White House will begin in Kalorama, a bucolic, elegant and diplomat-studded area of Washington, according to reports officials declined to confirm.
(10) There is a bucolic tendency running deep in the national character, expressing itself in a love of rustic poets and painters, and it is this part of us that has turned to fury at the coalition government and its prosaically named Draft National Planning Policy Framework.
(11) In a bucolic corner of the County Kerry coastline, pub chain owner Oliver Hughes has opened one of a few independent whiskey distilleries in Ireland.
(12) A year ago on Saturday, in a bucolic corner of Connecticut that was known for little except the quality of life enjoyed by its citizens, 20 young children and six teaching staff were killed as they began another ordinary day at Sandy Hook elementary school.
(13) It is one of the rocky outcrops overlooking the bucolic valley of Qunu, where South Africa's first black president grew up and which, at 93, he still calls home.
(14) A fabulous short film now in the British Film Industry’s archive explained this vision to the public, showing bucolic fields being covered with the first futuristic buildings.
(15) From the banjo-picking soundtrack to the bucolic backdrop, this ad marked a refreshing return to straightforward, uncynical campaigning and demonstrated the enduring appeal of the outsider, distant from DC horse-trading.
(16) The AIL scheme has once again delivered a really important acquisition for the nation.” The bucolic, unchanging Suffolk scene at Flatford was one Constable returned to again and again, a nostalgic symbol of the “natural” way of life.
(17) The Concord of the 1840s, where, in Thoreau's perception, men "lead lives of quiet desperation", slave-drivers of themselves with "no time to be any thing but a machine", was by our lights a bucolic world, the steam engine being the technological ultimate and the main labour farm labour.
(18) Kigenyi paints a bucolic picture and certainly during our short visit to Kibale and surrounding villages such as Nyabweya, Mabono and Bigoni we saw little evidence of obvious disgruntlement or need.
(19) Who would guarantee their safety?” Ever since, she has been living in a sanatorium, a dozen miles outside Kiev, set in a bucolic wood.
(20) People are coming here and making a difference,” the 41-year-old said, sipping iced tea on a terrace in one of the city’s most bucolic spots, Audubon Park.