Proselyte

A proselyte - pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, IPA: /'prɒ sɪ ,laɪt/ – is a person recently converted to a religious faith – though the word may also be applied in other than religious contexts to a recent convert to any set of beliefs, e.g., a particular political creed.

The word proselyte comes, through Church Latin, from the Greek προσηλύτος (prosēlutos), a noun from προσέρχεσθαι (proserchesthai, to draw near): προσηλύτος (prosēlutos) means ‘one who has arrived at a place, a stranger’, but was also used of a person who had recently converted to Judaism (see, e.g., Matthew 23.15).

Derivatives from proselyte are:

the verb ‘to proselytize’ (or ‘to proselytise’), meaning ‘to seek to convert (someone) from one religious faith to another or from one set of (e.g., political) beliefs to another set’; and

the noun ‘proselytizer’ (or ‘proselytiser’), meaning ‘a person who seeks to make converts’.