oblate

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.

In the Roman Catholic Church, a secular person devoted to a monastery, but not under its vows.

A child dedicated by his or her parents to a monastic life, and therefore held in monastic discipline and domicile.

One who assumed the cowl in immediate anticipation of death.

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.

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.

Eccles., a loaf of unconsecrated bread prepared for use at the celebration of the eucharist; altar-bread.

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.