friar

   A friar is a monk, and would therefore normally be addressed as ‘brother’, but ‘friar’, used on its own or followed by a name, seems to have been used in former times. Friars were properly members of the mendicant orders of the Roman Catholic Church. Franciscan, Augustine, Dominican, and Carmelite, but other monks were sometimes loosely accorded the title, a form of French frère, ‘brother’. Well-known literary friars likely to be addressed by title include the fat and cheerful vagabond Friar Tuck in the Robin Hood tales, and two Franciscans in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The latter are addressed variously as ‘friar’, ‘holy friar’, ‘comfortable friar’, and ‘brother’. Two more friars appear in Measure for Measure and there is another in Much Ado About Nothing. All three are frequently addressed by their professional title.