Recluse
A recluse is a person who lives in voluntary seclusion from the public and society. The word is from the Latin recludere, which means “shut up” or “sequester”. Historically, the word referred to a hermit’s total isolation from the world. Examples are Symeon of Trier, who lived within the great Roman gate Porta Nigra with permission from the Archbishop of Trier, or Theophan the Recluse, the 19th-century Russian Orthodox monk who was later glorified as a saint. Celebrated figures who spent, or have spent, significant portions of their lives as recluses include Virgil, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Emily Brontë, J. D. Salinger, Emily Dickinson, Gustave Flaubert, Paul Cézanne, Nikola Tesla, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, H. P. Lovecraft, Marie Curie, Marcel Proust, Howard Hughes, Greta Garbo, Jackson Pollock, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Jean-Luc Godard, Thomas Pynchon, John Swartzwelder, Paul Allen, Layne Staley and Michael Jackson.
Reclude (verb)
To open; to unblock. 15th-19th c.
Reclude (verb)
To close off, to confine. from 16th c.
Reclude (verb)
To seclude, cut off from the community, the world etc. from 16th c.
Recluse (adjective)
(now rare) Sequestered; secluded, isolated.
“a recluse monk or hermit”
Recluse (adjective)
(now rare) Hidden, secret.
Recluse (noun)
A person who lives in self-imposed isolation or seclusion from the world, especially for religious purposes; a hermit.
Recluse (noun)
The place where a recluse dwells; a place of isolation or seclusion.
Recluse (noun)
A brown recluse spider.
Recluse (verb)
To shut; to seclude.
Recluse (noun)
a person who lives a solitary life and tends to avoid other people
“she has turned into a virtual recluse”
“he’s a bit of a recluse”
Recluse (adjective)
favouring a solitary life.