cloister

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle.
2. n. A place, especially a monastery or convent, devoted to religious seclusion.
3. n. Life in a monastery or convent.
4. n. A secluded, quiet place.
5. v. To shut away from the world in or as if in a cloister; seclude.
6. v. To furnish (a building) with a cloister.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An inclosure.
2. n. An arched way or a covered walk running round the walls of certain portions of monastic and collegiate buildings. It usually has a wall on one side, and a series of arcades with piers and columns, or an open colonnade, surrounding an interior court, on the opposite side. The original purpose of cloisters was to afford a place in which the monks could take exercise and recreation.
3. n. Hence A place of religious retirement; a monastery; a convent; a nunnery; a religious house.
4. n. Any arcade or colonnade round an open court.
5. To confine in a cloister or convent.
6. To shut up; confine closely within walls; immure; shut up in retirement from the world.

Wiktionary

1. n. A covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle; especially.
2. n. such arcade in a monastery
3. n. such arcade fitted with representations of the stages of Christ's Passion
4. n. A place, especially a monastery or convent, devoted to religious seclusion.
5. n. The monastic life
6. v. To become a Roman Catholic religious.
7. v. To confine in a cloister, voluntarily or not.
8. v. To deliberately withdraw from worldly things.
9. v. To provide with (a) cloister(s).
10. v. To protect or isolate.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An inclosed place.
2. n. A covered passage or ambulatory on one side of a court the series of such passages on the different sides of any court, esp. that of a monastery or a college.
3. n. A monastic establishment; a place for retirement from the world for religious duties.
4. v. To confine in, or as in, a cloister; to seclude from the world; to immure.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. surround with a cloister
2. n. residence that is a place of religious seclusion (such as a monastery)
3. v. seclude from the world in or as if in a cloister
4. n. a courtyard with covered walks (as in religious institutions)
5. v. surround with a cloister, as of a garden