Other forms: convents
A convent is the house where nuns live together. Enter a convent, a convent school, the convent gate.
The word names the community as much as the building. Convent schools were for a long time the main route to education for girls in Catholic countries. It comes from the same Latin verb as convene — a convent is those who have come together.
1nounconventA house where nuns live together.
“She left home at eighteen to become a nun in a convent.”
convent is a religious house.
Latin conventus means an assembly, from convenire, to come together. Convene is the same verb.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷem-
Latin
conventus
Old French
covent
Middle English
convent
English, today
convent
From Middle English convent, variant of covent, from Old French covent, from Latin conventus, perfect participle of the verb convenio (whence ultimately convene), see con- + venio. a doublet of coven.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA