CONVENT, a term applied to the body of persons associated together in a monastery, whose official designation is "the abbot (or prior, etc.) and convent" of the place in question (Lat. con ventus, from convenire, to come together) . The popular use of the word for a nunnery, as distinct from a monastery or house of male religious, is strictly inaccurate : all houses of religious communities are monasteries, irrespective of the sex of the con vent which inhabits them, and the term convent is equally free from such limitations.