MENDICANT

[noun] [C], [adjective] [not gradable] [formal] - (of) a person who asks people they do not know for money; a beggarHigh unemployment has caused the number of homeless people and mendicants to rise in the city. [C](formal) Mendicant is also used to refer to a member of a religious group established in the Middle Ages, whose members were not allowed to own property and who lived by asking people to give them food and money .The Franciscans were a mendicant order.Mendicant friars were often involved in missionary work.