1600-1700Greekasketikos, from asketes ‘person who exercises, hermit’, from askein ‘to work, exercise’
Examples
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
They belonged to an ascetic Jewish sect called the Essenes
EXAMPLES FROM THE CORPUS
At the same time, however, the Church also honored an ascetic ideal.
Counterbalancing this ascetic wunderkind is his brother, Charles Solomon.
Like the ascetic movement of which it was an outgrowth, monasticism had its origins in the Middle East.
Louis became an extremely devout and ascetic man.
Other forms of holiness - that of the virgin and the ascetic - were assimilated to martyrdom.
The church itself became a two-class system: the ascetic monasteries versus the more worldly regular clergy.
living without any physical pleasures or comforts, especially for religious reasons: an ascetic life—ascetic noun [countable]—asceticism /-tɪsɪzəm/ noun [uncountable]