Convent

(Lat. con and venire, “to come together”). To convent is to assemble persons for some common purpose; thus the noun can designate any general or specific gathering or company. Already in thirteenth-century English, “convent” designated particularly men or women living under a disciplined religious order with a single superior. From the institutional phenomenon the term was applied by the sixteenth century to the set of buildings thus occupied, and since the late eighteenth century, without historical warrant, popularly restricted to that of women only.

See also Cloister.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)

kon-vent’: Found in the King James Version margin of Jer 49:19: "Who will convent me in judgment?" and in Jer 50:44: "Who will convent me to plead?" The Hebrew term which is rendered convent is ya`adh, and it means to summon to a court, to call on to plead. Convent is obsolete, but it was formerly used, and meant to summon, or to call before a judge. Shakespeare used it several times. In King Henry VIII, Act V, he said, "The lords of the council hath commanded that the archbishop be convented to the council board."