BRETHREN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does brethren mean? 

• BRETHREN (noun)
  The noun BRETHREN has 1 sense:

1. (plural) the lay members of a male religious order

  Familiarity information: BRETHREN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BRETHREN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(plural) the lay members of a male religious order

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("brethren" is a kind of...):

religious order; religious sect; sect (a subdivision of a larger religious group)

Domain usage:

plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)

 Context examples 

There was a buzz and murmur among the white-frocked brethren at this grave charge; but the Abbot held up his long quivering hand.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“The old woman has destroyed all my brethren in fire and smoke; she seized sixty of them at once, and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might have gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his wild brethren.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Now, sir, why should you not follow your brethren?

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They were my brethren, my fellow beings, and I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them, as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

To add to the difficulties and dangers of the time, masses of sea-fog came drifting inland—white, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

This nut, he continued, with playful solemnity, while so many of his brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still in possession of all the happiness that a hazel nut can be supposed capable of.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty, stumbling and stammering and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of his brethren in the new land.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I have carved two days a week for the brethren.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)