columbarium

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The university wants to build what's called a columbarium -- a structure with niches for the ashes of alumni -- but there's a catch.

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Definitions (12)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. noun A vault with niches for urns containing ashes of the dead.
  2. noun One of the niches in such a vault.
  3. noun A dovecote.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

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Examples (50)

  • This second tower was clearly a columbarium, the hundreds of wall niches set with tiny doors. —  EBSCOhost
  • In her third adventure, art restorer Annie Kincaid investigates the claim of a graduate student that the alleged reproduction of Raphael's La Fornarina hanging in an Oakland columbarium is actually the original. —  EQMM,December2007
  • The reading room was huge: thousands of manuscript rolls set into the walls like doves in a columbarium, guarded by humorless busts of safely dead historians and poets. —  Davis, Lindsey - The Course of Honor
  • The porch off the north side I know what a columbarium is, lady Glad to hear it. —  EQMM, Sep - Oct 2006
  • Mr Yeo responded that every time MND designates a site for a hostel, columbarium or sanitation works, "people don't like it". —  TODAYonline
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Words tagged columbarium

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This word has been looked up 79 times.

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin columbārium, sepulchre for urns, dovecote, from columba, dove.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin, a dove-cote, a pigeon-house, hence later (Late Latin) in senses like those of English pigeonhole, a putlog-hole, a hole near the axle of a wheel, a hole in the side of a vessel for an oar, a rowlock, a place of sepulture; properly neuter of columbarius, adjective, pertaining to doves, from columba, a pigeon, dove: see Columba.
 

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/kɑləmˈbeɪriəm/
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