Bethlehemite

English

Alternative forms

• Bethlemite

Etymology

Bethlehem +‎ -ite

Noun

Bethlehemite (plural Bethlehemites)

1. An inhabitant of Bethlehem in Judea.
   • 2023, Isabella Hammad, Enter Ghost, Jonathan Cape, page 218:

     Faris, the only Bethlehemite in the cast, was striding along with a tour-guide air, visibly pleased to have us on his turf.

2. (obsolete) (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) An insane person; a madman; a bedlamite.
   • 2010 November 1, Kent Cartwright, Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double: The Rhythms of Audience Response, Penn State Press, →ISBN, page 210:

     Edgar's portrait of the Bedlam beggar, the filthy and "horrible" spectacle with "roaring" voice and "numbed and mortified bare arms," is so realistic that it has acquired a definitional status in the history of madness. Though actual Bethlehemites did not roam the countryside begging alms, "Tom O' Bedlam" was a popular name, like Abraham Man, for crazed vagabonds in Renaissance England.

3. (historical) Member of an extinct English order of friars.
4. (historical) Member of a Spanish order of friars, founded in 1653 and refounded in 1984.
5. A particular apple cultivar.
   • 1891, Report of the Iowa State Horticultural Society:

     I grafted the Bethlehemite, spoken of by Mr. Ferris, twenty years ago in wild crab.

Translations

inhabitant of Bethlehem

• French: Bethléemite m or f
• Italian: betlemita m or f
• Spanish: betlemita (es) m or f

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “Bethlehemite”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)