Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To offer; present; propose.
  • To offer as an oblation; devote to the service of God or of the church.
  • In geometry, flattened at the poles: said of a figure generated by the revolution of an ellipse about its minor axis: as, the earth is an oblate spheroid. See prolate.
  • noun In the Roman Catholic Church, a secular person devoted to a monastery, but not under its vows.
  • noun A child dedicated by his or her parents to a monastic life, and therefore held in monastic discipline and domicile.
  • noun One who assumed the cowl in immediate anticipation of death.
  • noun One of a congregation of secular priests who do not bind themselves by monastic vows. The congregation of the Oblates of St. Charles or Oblates of the Blessed Virgin and St. Ambrose was founded in the diocese of Milan in the sixteenth century by St. Charles Borromeo; that of the Oblates of Italy was founded at Turin in 1816; and that of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, founded in the south of France in 1815, was brought into the United States in 1848.
  • noun One of a community of women engaged in religious and charitable work. Such communities are the oblates founded by St. Francesca of Rome about 1433, and the Oblate Sisters of Providence, a sisterhood of colored women founded at Baltimore in 1825 for the education and the amelioration of the condition of colored women.
  • noun Eccles., a loaf of unconsecrated bread prepared for use at the celebration of the eucharist; altar-bread.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Geom.) Flattened or depressed at the poles.
  • adjective Offered up; devoted; consecrated; dedicated; -- used chiefly or only in the titles of Roman Catholic orders. See Oblate, n.
  • adjective (Geom.) a solid generated by the revolution of an ellipse about its minor axis; an oblatum. Contrasted with prolate spheroid. See Ellipsoid of revolution, under Ellipsoid.
  • noun One of an association of priests or religious women who have offered themselves to the service of the church. There are three such associations of priests, and one of women, called oblates.
  • noun One of the Oblati.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Roman Catholic Church A person dedicated to a life of religion or monasticism, especially a member of an order without religious vows or a lay member of a religious community.
  • noun A child given up by its parents into the keeping or dedication of a religious order or house.
  • adjective Flattened or depressed at the poles.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having the equatorial diameter greater than the polar diameter; being flattened at the poles
  • noun a lay person dedicated to religious work or the religious life

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French oblat and its source, post-classical Latin oblatus ‘person dedicated to religious life’, a noun use of the past participle of offerre ‘to offer’.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin oblātus (oblatus), from Latin ob ("in front of, before") + latus ("broad, wide"), (modelled after prolatus ("extended, lengthened")).

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Examples

  • The Church, therefore, in the twelfth century, forbade the dedication of children in this way, and the term oblate has since been taken to mean persons, either lay or cleric, who voluntarily attach themselves to some monastery or order without taking the vows of religious.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2: Assizes-Browne 1840-1916 1913

  • An oblate is a secular Benedictine; that’s for people who are married, or even Protestants.

    The Exorsistah: X Returns Claudia Mair Burney 2010

  • He remains one year in the novitiate, and then becomes an "oblate" for seven years; another year's novitiate is then gone through, at the end of which he is called conversus, and his simple vows are taken for three years.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux 1840-1916 1913

  • At a later date the word "oblate" was used to describe such lay men or women as were pensioned off by royal and other patrons upon monasteries or benefices, where they lived as in an almshouse or hospital.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11: New Mexico-Philip 1840-1916 1913

  • Note that you omitted your latest "pious title" which at last count was now "oblate".

    National Catholic Reporter 2009

  • In the sky above, the oblate form of Achernar shined a cool bluish white.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire David R. George III 2011

  • In the sky above, the oblate form of Achernar shined a cool bluish white.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire David R. George III 2011

  • In the sky above, the oblate form of Achernar shined a cool bluish white.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire David R. George III 2011

  • In the sky above, the oblate form of Achernar shined a cool bluish white.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire David R. George III 2011

  • Therefore, we—as the children of monkeys who fetishized symmetry and evenness—inherited a desire to live in a perfectly round world instead of a flat-topped oblate spheroid; to want planets that traveled in perfectly round orbits instead of weird egg-shaped ellipses and an Earth that looked like an inkblot with the equator as the fold.

    X, Chapter 3: Morowitz Benjamin Matvey 2012

Comments

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  • Flattened at the poles, as a spheroid generated by the revolution of an ellipse about its shorter axis. Opposite of prolate.

    November 14, 2007

  • Jimmy Corrigan's Stewie Griffin's head is oblate.

    March 20, 2012