cultist

noun

cult·​ist ˈkəl-tist 

plural cultists

: a member of a cult: such as

a

: a devotee or member of a religious cult

In 1826 … Shakers were persecuted as cultists distinguished by their use of dance in worship … and their belief in their founder, Mother Ann, as equal to Jesus.

—Robert Minkoff

b

: one who exhibits great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, etc.

… at a time when the Kinks don't even have an American record deal, it's heartening for aging Kinks cultists that Ray Davies has found a domestic publisher for X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography, a book that was published in England last year.

—David Wild

Although Pierce has seen reruns of the actress's films, he insists he is not a [Marilyn] Monroe cultist.

—David Wallace

If the paranoid cultists and survivalists are right, and the apocalypse is right around the corner, who do we want leading the nation through the pestilence, famine and plagues of locusts?

—Sparkle Hayter

Examples of cultist in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The Industry actress, 29, got soaked in fake blood for her role in the horror-action flick as Maria Reaves (the younger sister to protagonist Asia Reaves, played by Zazie Beetz), as did Graham, 56, who plays a satanic cultist. —Bailey Richards, PEOPLE, 5 Apr. 2026

There’s an incredible sequence where Zazie Beetz’s character fights cultists with a flaming axe. —Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 25 Mar. 2026

The film also features performances from Emma Chamberlain as traumatized former employee/cultist Pickle and Gabrielle Union as store manager Sharon, who’s been hired to keep the ladies in line after a tragedy recently struck the store. —Glenn Garner, Deadline, 17 Mar. 2026

Virgie is pursued, in some of the play’s funniest moments, by a slithering cultist in shiny green gloves who purrs like a deadly kitty and moves like an Animaniac. —Sara Holdren, Vulture, 11 Mar. 2026

Maybe, but my mind kept hot-air-ballooning away to my fellow-cultists, who were facing their own spiritual co-op boards. —Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker, 30 Jan. 2026

Islamists battled for their own theocratic nation, and bands of Christian cultists—whom locals, naming them according to their most notorious act, called chop-chop—severed the heads of those deemed unholy in villages and towns across Mindanao. —Sean Williams, Harpers Magazine, 27 Jan. 2026

Now, 50 years after their breakup, the Raspberries still count as scrappy underdogs, at least in the eyes of the cultists who keep the band’s legend alive. —Chris Willman, Variety, 13 Oct. 2025

Players will visit stunning new locations, solve intricate puzzles, battle dangerous cultists, and encounter an epic new enemy in a classically thrilling Indiana Jones adventure. —Griff Griffin, MSNBC Newsweek, 3 Sep. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1898, in the meaning defined above