Emily Dickinson Lexicon

GYM-NO'SO-PHIST, n. [Gr. γυμνος, naked, and σοφιστης, a philosopher.]

A philosopher of India, so called from his going with bare feet, or with little clothing. The Gymnosophists in India lived in the woods and on mountains, subsisting on wild productions of the earth. They never drank wine, nor married. Some of them traveled about, and practiced physic. They believed the immortality and transmigration of the soul. They placed the chief happiness of man in a contempt of the goods of fortune, and of the pleasures of sense. Encyc.