Suppliant means someone who is asking humbly. You enter church as a suppliant, asking God to spare you from illness. You ask in a suppliant (humble) manner, because you know God is stern and demands total faith.
Suppliant is not a word you hear often these days–-it was tailor-made to be used in the days when common people spent much of their lives on their knees in big stone buildings begging for things from monarchs or from God––think hair shirts, prayer, suppliants begging the lord of the manor not to kill them for missing a payment on the rent.
