Someone who asks humbly and urgently for something, especially from a person with power or from God. The asking is not a normal request — it is pleading, from a position of having nothing to bargain with. The word lives mostly in religious writing, literature and history: supplicants at a shrine, supplicants before a king. In religious use it is the ordinary word for a person praying earnestly for something. "The supplicants knelt in silence." Modern writers borrow it to make a sharp point about power. If a newspaper writes that a government "went to the negotiating table as a supplicant", it means that government had no strength left and could only ask for mercy. That critical use is quite common in political and business journalism, and it is worth recognising because it is where a learner is most likely to meet the word today. It is also an adjective ("a supplicant posture"), though the noun is far more usual. Supplicant and suppliant mean the same thing. Supplicant is a little more common in modern writing; suppliant sounds more poetic.

懇求者、祈求者（尤指向神明祈求，或向有權力的人低聲下氣地請求）。現代新聞常用來諷刺：說某國「以 supplicant 的姿態談判」就是指它毫無籌碼、只能求人。