(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.