What's the difference between beggar and mendicant?

Beggar


Definition:

  • (n.) One who begs; one who asks or entreats earnestly, or with humility; a petitioner.
  • (n.) One who makes it his business to ask alms.
  • (n.) One who is dependent upon others for support; -- a contemptuous or sarcastic use.
  • (n.) One who assumes in argument what he does not prove.
  • (v. t.) To reduce to beggary; to impoverish; as, he had beggared himself.
  • (v. t.) To cause to seem very poor and inadequate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For the billions of the poorest people around the world who rely on philanthropic aid to meet even basic needs, as the saying goes, “beggars can’t be choosers”.
  • (2) Roger Harding, Shelter’s director of communications, policy and campaigns, said: “It beggars belief that a landlord can evict a family simply because they have three children, and the fact that this one has is yet another sign of our broken rental market.
  • (3) BMWs, Porsches and Land Cruisers meander through Luanda past beggars missing limbs due to the civil war or polio.
  • (4) It is this ultra-austerianism that has led to the cataclysmic beggaring of Greece, bleeding the patient white and then – when seeing that he’s dying – insisting that he bleed some more.
  • (5) There are families from Kutubdia who were once rich, with land and cows and boats, and now are living in slums and are beggars.
  • (6) If they are taking a Danish job then out, but primarily the barriers should be closed for criminal jerks and beggars and likewise from Romania, Bulgaria etc.” Another post refers to a newspaper story of Caroline Wozniacki, born to Polish parents but a Danish resident all her life, leaving photographs on Serena Williams’s phone after secretly taking it at a party.
  • (7) Independent music lobby group Impala, which has members including Adele's label Beggars Group, held a vote at a board meeting on Monday that maintained opposition to the deal.
  • (8) Not only does it beggar belief that Ms Proudman could have inferred any slight from such an innocuous missive, it also makes me fear for the next generation of women.” She also criticised the “armies of Feminazis” who had supported Proudman.
  • (9) MPs claimed it "beggars belief" that so much money is being written off and said parents are frustrated at not being paid the right amount of money or any at all.
  • (10) "It would be nice if Arsenal could pick up the odd trophy along the way, but beggars can't always be choosers."
  • (11) Unlike the multi-racial community living and working in Woodstock , Cape Town’s oldest suburb, the vast majority of the Old Biscuit Mill’s patrons are white, while many of those serving in the food market and other businesses are black, as are the car guards and beggars outside.
  • (12) The offers were rejected as "insulting, provocative and beggarly" by the chiefs of Bodo, but later accepted on legal advice.
  • (13) And what is worse is that in those places where this appraisal exercise has been carried out, it has been claimed that 99.5% of GPs passed with flying colours, a figure that beggars belief.
  • (14) "It almost beggars belief that any administration could embark on such a course."
  • (15) Whilst we understand the logic of their proposal and their aim to introduce a subscription-only service, we struggle to see why rights owners and artists should bear this aspect of Apple’s customer acquisition costs,” claimed independent label Beggars Group in a statement earlier in the week.
  • (16) Beggars have been choosers, and they chose to do the right thing by their artists.
  • (17) The Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who has played a leading role in calling for an investigation into child abuse allegations, also aired his on Wednesdaydoubts yesterday, saying it beggared belief that the government did not foresee the potential conflict of interest when it first invited her to take the post on Monday.
  • (18) Viewed from the eurozone or Tokyo, the US is indulging in a beggar-thy-neighbour devaluation, knowing that the hands of the European Central Bank are tied since the Germans are hardly likely to sanction the purchase of IOUs issued in Greece.
  • (19) But it is hard not to see that, since then, the vices have got worse: a little further up the road Somalian prostitutes proposition pedestrians at all hours; a little further down, past beggars who cry "I'm hungry", young men crouch in doorways doubled over with needles in hand.
  • (20) Another compared the country to a person without sufficient food donning expensive clothes: "It's the same as beggars donating.

Mendicant


Definition:

  • (a.) Practicing beggary; begging; living on alms; as, mendicant friars.
  • (n.) A beggar; esp., one who makes a business of begging; specifically, a begging friar.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) That is why, among other reasons, it is regrettable that the British approach to China under the coalition has come to have about it something mendicant, cap in hand, and unduly deferential.
  • (2) Previously, the self-appointed political elite in Scotland has comprised a small, mendicant travelling band of senior politicians, political journalists and an assortment of talking heads who pop up on our television screens whenever there is an election or even just the hint of one.
  • (3) Whereas for a long time it was assumed that chloride ions were reabsorbed entirely passively with sodium--the "mendicant" role of chloride, more recent studies suggest that several distinct reabsorptive transport mechanisms operate in parallel.
  • (4) While Nauru in practice is best described as a “mendicant” or even “prostitute” state, its formal status has allowed Australia to put forward the legal fiction that the treatment of refugees on Nauru is a matter for Nauru, not Australia.
  • (5) Finn, Merivel writes, "describes himself as a portraitist, but leads, I discover, an almost mendicant life in the shires of England, going on foot from one great house to another, begging to paint its inhabitants".
  • (6) This surgery was frequently performed by itinerant mendicants, charlatans, and also by the more legitimate members of the surgical community living in the 13 states at the time of the Revolution.
  • (7) The main point of the World Bank study is active community participation which stops the paternalistic government-mendicant demanding populace pathology that is common today.
  • (8) During this time, too, it was relatively simple to claim housing benefit while subletting my student flat over the summer for nothing to the mendicant men who drank under the bridge in exchange for some of their Giro Party cargo (a dozen cans of Tennent's Super each Tuesday).
  • (9) Economically misgoverned for a generation, we are reduced to being principle-free economic mendicants, with Bambi Osborne and Thumper Johnson touring the world for hand-outs.