Of, relating to, or characteristic of anchorites or anchoritic practice; describing religious seclusion and devotion.
From 'anchorite' plus the suffix '-ical' (relating to), which is a variant of '-ic.' This extended form appears in formal or technical contexts, particularly in religious and historical scholarship discussing monastic traditions.
English loves creating synonym adjectives with different suffixes—'anchoretic' and 'anchoretical' mean essentially the same thing, but '-ical' often appears in more formal academic writing, showing how word variants signal different registers of language!
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