Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A hallowed or holy place.
- n. A chapel for seafarers.
- n. Chiefly British A Nonconformist chapel, especially a Baptist or Methodist one.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A hallowed spot.
- n. A name sometimes applied to a place of worship in England, especially to a dissenting chapel.
- n. A church or chapel for seamen, whether located on shore or, as is often the case, afloat in a harbor.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A place of worship; a hallowed spot.
- n. A chapel for dissenters.
- n. A house of worship for seamen.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a house of worship (especially one for sailors)
Etymologies
- Hebrew bêt 'ēl, house of God : bayit, house; see byt in Semitic roots + 'ēl, God; see אl in Semitic roots.
Examples
“The house was called bethel agreeable to the prayer that was made.”
“Note: I thought "bethel" was the word for house in Hebrew - what is this Jeru stuff?”
“She sprang from the bed and hurriedly rearranged the bethel on her bedspread.”
“She will send you a letter if you send her a postcard. note: postcard deal still good, let me know if you'd like a reply: po box 81 bethel vt 05032”
“There is a bethel, or floating "seaman's chapel," anchored in the”
“BAETYLUS (Gr. [Greek: baitulos, baitulion]), a word of Semitic origin (= bethel) denoting a sacred stone, which was supposed to be endowed with life.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy"
“Page 8 and so our house for years was a real "bethel.”
“They had matched each other in number since the French admiral had exiled the British missionary-consul, and compelled the queen to erect a papal church for every bethel.”
“A stone might be a/bît îli/or bethel -- a "house of god," and almost invested with the status of a living thing, but that does not prove that the Babylonians thought of every stone as being endowed with life, even in prehistoric times.”
“Before breakfast, another blast for family and private prayer; and then every tent became, in camp language, "a bethel of struggling Jacobs and prevailing Israels," every tree "an altar;" and every grove "a secret closet;" till the air all became religious words and phrases, and vocal with "Amens.”
Lists
‘bethel’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
knitandpurl "By the time I was eleven I could read and write. Mr. Jamrach said he needed his boys to be able to write things down and read off lists. I was quick. Ma was impressed. "You clever boy, Jaf," she said when I read the posters plastered outside the seamen's bethel."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 40 of the Doubleday hardcover edition Jan 8, 2012