shrine

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A place of religious devotion or commemoration, such as:
2. n. a place where devotion is paid to a deity or deities, as in Shinto.
3. n. the tomb of a saint or other venerated person.
4. n. a location where an important event in the life of a holy person is thought to have occurred.
5. n. A container or receptacle for sacred relics; a reliquary.
6. n. A site hallowed by association with a revered person or object or with an important event: Independence Hall, shrine of American liberty.
7. v. To enshrine.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A box; an ark; a chest.
2. n. A box for holding the bones of saints or other sacred relics; a reliquary. Portable shrines containing relics were commonly arched boxes covered with precious metal, enamels, and engraving, and in churches were generally placed near the altar. See cut under monstrance.
3. n. Hence A tomb of a canonized or other sacred person; the mausoleum of a saint; a tomb of shrine-like configuration.
4. n. An altar, small chapel or temple, or other sacred object or place peculiarly consecrated to and supposed to be hallowed by the presence of some deity, saint, mythological hero, or other personality reputed sacred. See cut on following page, and cut under octastyle.
5. n. Erroneously, an image.
6. n. Metaphorically, a thing or place hallowed and consecrated by its history or past associations, or supposed to be the incarnation of some object of worship.
7. n. A charnel-house.
8. To place in a shrine; enshrine; hence, figuratively, to deify or canonize.
9. To inclose in something suggestive of the great preciousness of what is inclosed: as, the jewel was shrined in a velvet casket.

Wiktionary

1. n. A holy or sacred place, which is dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, or similar figure of awe and respect, at which said figure is venerated or worshipped.
2. v. To enshrine; to place reverently, as if in a shrine.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A case, box, or receptacle, especially one in which are deposited sacred relics, as the bones of a saint.
2. n. Any sacred place, as an altar, tromb, or the like.
3. n. A place or object hallowed from its history or associations.
4. n. Short for Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, a secret fraternal organization professedly originated by one Kalif Alu, a son-in-law of Mohammed, at Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 25 (about 646 a. d.) In the modern order, established in the United States in 1872, only Knights Templars or thirty-second degree Masons are eligible for admission, though the order itself is not Masonic. A member of the order is popularly called a Shriner, and the order itself is sometimes called the Shriners.
5. v. To enshrine; to place reverently, as in a shrine.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a place of worship hallowed by association with some sacred thing or person
2. v. enclose in a shrine