Websters Word for the week of August 25, 2025

Featuring the "Websters Word for the week of..." section, where each Monday a new term related to spirituality (and everyday life) is highlighted from Merriam-Webster. The word for this week:

Asceticism:

1: the practice of strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline : the condition, practice, or mode of life of an ascetic : rigorous abstention from self-indulgence

Sacrifice, renunciation, asceticism, fasting, returning again to God … : these are inclinations fueled as much by instinct as by religious idealism.
—Joyce Carol Oates

Crossing the Atlantic in a small sailboat is an exercise in asceticism, a test of what the human psyche can do without.

—Sarah Ballard

2: austerity in appearance, manner, or attitude

His neatly trimmed white beard and runner's physique suggest the asceticism of a mathematics professor, while his questioning mind signals a mistrust of surface impressions.

—Bruce Schoenfeld

In contrast to the chaste asceticism of earlier modernist office towers, the AT&T Building incorporated traditional symbols of imperial power (Roman vaults and arches), prestige (a Chippendale-inspired silhouette), and old money (a huge golden statue in the lobby, which once stood on top of the old AT&T Building).

—Witold Rybczynski

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