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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A burial vault.
  2. n. A receptacle for sacred relics, especially in an altar.
  3. v. To place into a sepulcher; inter.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A tomb; a cave, building, etc., for interment; a burial-vault.
  2. n. In eccles. arch., a recess in some early churches, in which were placed on Good Friday, with appropriate ceremonies, the cross, the reserved sacrament, and the sacramental plate, and from which they were taken at high mass on Easter, to typify the burial and resurrection of Christ.
  3. To bury; inter; entomb.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A burial chamber.
  2. v. To bury the dead.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The place in which the dead body of a human being is interred, or a place set apart for that purpose; a grave; a tomb.
  2. v. To bury; to inter; to entomb.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a chamber that is used as a grave

Etymologies

  1. Middle English sepulcre, from Old French, from Latin sepulcrum, sepulchrum, from sepultus, past participle of sepelīre, to bury the dead.

Examples

  • “Called the Chamber of Paladine, the sepulcher was a large rectangular room, built far below the ground where the destruction of the Tower did not affect it.”

    Dragons of Winter Night

  • “Often this is in a little detached garden, containing a small stone building (where there is no rock), resembling a house, which is called the sepulcher of the family -- it has neither door nor window.”

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

  • “Her watchfulness is untiring; she who guarded the sepulcher was the first to approach it, and the last to depart from its awful yet sublime scene.”

    The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

  • “In the context of the original inscription with nesna in it (TLE 372: Θestia Velθurnas nesna), if we are to pursue her avenue of reasoning, it should then be better translated as "sepulcher" (hence "Thestia Velthurna's sepulcher") given its archaeological context.”

    Etruscan nesl, TLE 515 and other random Etruscan stuff

  • “A confirmation of this aversion on the part of some members of the Commission for the expression "sepulcher" can be found in N. Giampietro, op. cit, p. 312.”

    RORATE CÆLI

  • “Your workspace will become a wide open plain rather than a sepulcher of records of the past.”

    The Wall Street Journal: End the Paper Chase

  • “There was a sharp report; mason swung into his aerial sepulcher, and Malemute Kid lashed the dogs into a wild gallop as he fled across the snow.”

    The White Silence

  • “His story concludes with this hybrid verse: "There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Thomas Jefferson's Cut-and-Paste Bible

  • “There was a genuinely creepy encounter with the Lich King inside a sepulcher at the Vrykul city of Gjalerbron.”

    "There's a shark-shaped fin, in the water of my dreams..."

  • “He had excavated the fabulous tomb of Seti I at Abydos, and in London he hoped to exhibit a reproduction of the sepulcher.”

    The Wall Street Journal: A Pre-Digital Tomb Raider

Show 10 more examples...

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘sepulcher’.

Comments

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  • seanahan In America, I've seen sepulchre a couple times. Dec 1, 2007

  • reesetee Or you're already a hypocrite. ;-) Nov 30, 2007

  • sionnach Of course, you have to pay extra for the whiting process. Unless you buy the $495 undercoating from the dealer as well. Nov 30, 2007

  • reesetee According to a couple of dictionaries, "-chre" is British spelling and "-cher" is American. Nov 30, 2007

  • yarb As sometimes happens, cb, you are right. Nov 30, 2007

  • chained_bear Really? I always thought this was spelled sepulchre. Nov 30, 2007

  • thinkcharlene Perry Mason - Season 6, Episode 6 - "The Case of the Dodging Domino" Mar 15, 2007

‘sepulcher’ has been looked up 2113 times, loved by 11 people, added to 41 lists, commented on 7 times, and has a Scrabble score of 16.