suppliant
- adjective
- /ˈsʌplɪənt/
- Formal
:
súplice
- With a suppliant voice, she asked the council for help to save her home.
Examples
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God who hear'st the surges roll, deign to save the suppliant soul.
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Rather than accepting, for example, the categories of identity "urban" and "rural," with the often unexamined accompanying assumptions of "modern" and "traditional," we think it is important to look at how those terms are used, by whom, in differently framed contexts, in order to understand how individuals are constructed as "in touch" with the machinations of capital or as suppliant labor forces, among other things.
Academic text (1992) -
A smell clung to my clothes as I walked, clinging to me, suppliant.
Fiction book (1999) -
The theme of both dramas, Sophocles' and Valle's, is the death of the suppliant hero.
Academic text (1994) -
Satan finds it ignominious and shameful to lower himself to God, to bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee and deify his power.
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Should pale death with treble dread make the ocean caves our bed, God who hear'st the surges roll, deign to save our suppliant soul.
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Should pale death with treble dread make the ocean caves our bed, God who hear'st the surges roll, deign to save the suppliant soul.
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Other Old Babylonian representations of major gods are rare, such as Nergal, god of war, pestilence, and death, shown in Figure 26 with one of his lion-headed demons and the suppliant goddess who addresses her prayer on behalf of the god's devotee.
Academic text (1993) -
He approached the judge with a suppliant expression, pleading for mercy in his case.
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The suppliant children gathered at the door, hoping for food and shelter.
Synonyms
Asking in a humble, serious way for help or forgiveness
Asking for help in a humble, urgent way
Antonyms
How Pleading
Surface Forms
Morphology
suppliant = supplicate (semi-transparent) = supplic + ant
The adjective is formed from the verb 'supplicate' with the participial/adjectival suffix '-ant', which is morphologically regular, but the base 'supplicate' is formal/less frequent so the relation may not be obvious to an average learner.
Etymology
Suppliant comes from the Latin supplicare, which meant 'to kneel' or 'to beg'. So when something or someone is described as suppliant, they show humble, pleading behaviour, like a person kneeling to ask for help.