Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A container or receptacle, such as an urn or a vault, for holding the bones of the dead.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A place where the bones of the dead are deposited; a charnel-house.
- n. A vase, casket, or other vessel for the reception of the bones or calcined remains of the dead.
- n. A bone-cave, or deposit formed largely of bones, belonging to late geological times.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A place where the bones of the dead are deposited; a charnel house.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any receptacle for the burial of human bones
Etymologies
- Late Latin ossuārium, from neuter of Latin ossuārius, of bones, from os, oss-, bone; see ost- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Another interesting note about the ossuary is that if you want to take photos, you have to pay an additional fee.”
“It turns out that the ossuary is from the correct era, archaeologists say, but the Aramaic inscription on its side - "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" - was a relatively recent addition.”
“An 'ossuary' is a stone box in which bones previously laid out in rock-cut tombs, such as those in the Gospels, were placed after they were retrieved by relatives or followers.”
The Huffington Post: Robert Eisenman: The James Ossuary: Is It Authentic? (An Update)
“An ossuary is a small stone receptacle built to hold the bones of family members.”
Simon & Schuster: God is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu …
“The ossuary was a white building with its lower windows blacked out.”
“Still others maintained that even if genuine we would never be able to prove that the “James son of Joseph” of the ossuary was the brother of Jesus of Nazareth since all three names were common in the period.”
“Now comes word from the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature that the ossuary might be authentic after all.”
“Such a thing as this had never been known before: the ossuary was a sacred place, and had been left untouched for centuries.”
“The last day," he continued, "we went to the ossuary, which is a big building - a glassed-in basement [that] has the bones of 100,000 men who were killed ... [who were] literally just laying rotting in the fields or blown apart from artillery.”
“The burial box, also called an ossuary, was discovered in 1990, but the inscription was just recently verified as legitimate and not the result of forgers trying to increase an artifact's value by Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University and Boaz Zissu of Bar Ilan University.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ossuary’.
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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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Blood Meridian: The Words
Words from Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"
argosy, ossuary, thaumaturge, devonian, ristras, chartvail, catafalque, suzerain, argonauts, unrectified, surbated, pyrolatrous and 84 more...
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The Aleph
Words found in a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges.
travail, magnanimous, troglodyte, euphorbia, satyr, lascivious, caustic, frontispiece, temerity, vertiginous, frieze, cupola and 72 more...
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edward ryklin's list
viewy, kibosh, snark, rostrum, flummox, ossuary, cosset, cacography, grok, tonsorial, postprandial, eschatology and 5 more...
thinkcharlene The Lost Tomb of Jesus Mar 5, 2007