Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Chiefly British A pantry.
- n. A niche near the altar of a church for keeping sacred vessels and vestments.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A place for keeping things; a storehouse, storeroom, closet, pantry, cupboard, press, safe, locker, chest. Specifically
- n. A place for keeping victuals; a pantry, cupboard, or meat-safe.
- n. Hir. Will not any fool take me for a wise man now, seeing me draw out of the pit of my treasury this little god with his belly full of gold?
- n. In ancient churches, a niche or recess, fitted with a door, in the wall near the altar, in which the sacred utensils were deposited. In the larger churches and cathedrals ambries were very numerous, were used for various purpose, and were sometimes large enough to be what we should now call closets, the doors and other parts that were seen being usually richly carved. Ambries are still used in Roman Catholic churches as depositories for the consecrated oils. They are some times made portable, in the form of a chest or cupboard, which is hung near the altar.
- n. A place for keeping books; a library.
- n. Same as almonry.
Wiktionary
- n. obsolete A storehouse. (Especially a niche or recess in a wall used for storage.)
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. In churches, a kind of closet, niche, cupboard, or locker for utensils, vestments, etc.
- n. A store closet, as a pantry, cupboard, etc.
- n. Improperly so used Almonry.
Etymologies
- From Anglo-Norman almarie, aumer et al., Old French almarie, and their source, Latin armārium. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English almerie, place for safekeeping, from Old French almarie, from Medieval Latin almārium, from Latin armārium, closet, from arma, tools; see arm2. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But before I went, I looked around, and espied an ambry fashioned in the wall of the bed-lane, and the door was half open; and the said ambry was wrought of the daintiest, all of gold and pearl and gems; and I said to myself: Herein is some treasure, and this is a tide of war.”
“So I opened the ambry, and within it was even more gloriously wrought than without; and there was nought therein, save”
“The only furniture, excepting a washing-tub and a wooden press, called in Scotland an ambry, sorely decayed, was a large wooden bed, planked, as is usual, all around, and opening by a sliding panel.”
“Have you seen to putting the best platters and ewers in the ambry?”
“In the south wall there is a beautiful piscina, and in the north wall an ambry with a small stone penthouse; an octagonal baptismal font of remarkable design stands against the east wall of the aisle.”
“There is an ambry in the south wall near the east end, and the doorway is semicircular and of Norman character.”
“The place wherein this chapel and alms-house standeth was called the Elemosinary, or almonry, now corruptly the ambry, for that the alms of the Abbey were there distributed to the poor; and therein Islip, abbot of Westminster, erected the first press of book-printing that ever was in England, about the year of Christ 1471.”
“He had refused definitely to enter the atelier of the gentleman who pleased his clients by ingeniously simulating the grain of walnut; and though he had seen the old oaken ambry kicked out contemptuously into the farmyard, serving perhaps the necessities of hens or pigs, he would not apprentice himself to the masters of veneer.”
“Coming to a fine carved ambry, he hesitated, then stood still.”
“He opened a door of the ambry, pulled out a drawer, and, pressing some spring, revealed a narrow, secret shelf.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ambry’.
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Rare Words - A
Not just rare words, but thousands of RARE WORDS WITH DEFINITIONS.
If you want to see the definitions, too, go to
http://phrontistery.i...aba, abacinate, abactor, abaculus, abaft, abampere, abapical, abarticular, abasement, abasia, abask, abatis and 1214 more...
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Storage Facilities
bankshall, storehouse, granary, cornhouse, garner, grange, bodega, repository, sceuophylacium, skeuophylakion, bookhouse, reliquary and 100 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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phrontistery - a
from phrontistery.info
aba, abacinate, abactor, abaculus, abaft, abampere, abapical, abarticular, abasement, abasia, abask, abatis and 1214 more...
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Sound Sex
taciturn, deflower, recursive, parapraxis, comitative, atelic, awkward, eccentric, libidinous, astereognosis, aloof, moonglade and 50 more...
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Most Obscure Words
acatalectic, acosmism, acuate, acuminate, adscititious, adytum, akratisma, alieniloquy, allelomorph, allochiria, allodium, alnage and 620 more...
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fitting words
a list of words from the indo european root ar- and variations : to fit together
ambry, rede, coarctate, anarthrous, artiodactyl, exordium, harmony, army, armoire, arm, armada, armadillo and 349 more...
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rememberers
prolix, ageusia, animadversion, anodyne, antic, arabesque, beadle, brachymetropia, colophon, desquamation, diaphoresis, diegesis and 3251 more...
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Awesome
Awesome words
mimsy, concupiscence, tumescent, ophidian, houri, vorpal, cyprian, Delphic, incipient, effete, existential, loam and 289 more...
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Objects and Things
anteroom, flagon, cocotte, ambry, cloche, pate, vespiary, fricassee, carousal, psoas, tome, aperture and 38 more...
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perhapsolutely's Words
polyradiculoneuro..., abulia, abubble, abscission, abaft, zareba, abatis, abigail, abiogenesis, ablate, ablaut, abo and 1705 more...
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