Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or suggesting a cloister; secluded.
  • adjective Living in a cloister.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to a cloister; of the nature of a cloister; belonging to or dwelling in a cloister.
  • Secluded; retired.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of, pertaining to, or confined in, a cloister; recluse.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of, pertaining to, or living in a cloister.
  • adjective Sheltered from the world; monastic.
  • adjective Secluded.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of communal life sequestered from the world under religious vows

Etymologies

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Examples

  • A kind of cloistral quietude pervaded the place; the devotees who came in spoke in low voices, as if in a confessional, slipped their purchases into their bags furtively, and went off with downcast eyes.

    His Masterpiece ��mile Zola 1871

  • Who does not feel, when following Browne into his study or his garden, that here is a kind of cloistral retreat from the common places of the outside world, that the handsome man is a true gentleman and a noble friend, and that his best clothes are his every-day wear?

    Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 6 Lucia Isabella Gilbert Runkle 1864

  • Started but did not finish: 4 (4.2%) … all distinterested lovers of books, will always look to [literature], as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world.

    A Progressive on the Prairie » March Bibliolust » Print 2010

  • Started but did not finish: 4 (4.2%) … all distinterested lovers of books, will always look to [literature], as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world.

    March Bibliolust « A Progressive on the Prairie 2010

  • After sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of passion, which accounts feelings as of higher value than things.

    At the Sign of the Cat and Racket 2007

  • After sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of passion, which accounts feelings as of higher value than things.

    At the Sign of the Cat and Racket 2007

  • It is this capacity, I believe, that promotes Borges so far above the level of the exotic antiquarian, the obsessed bibliophile, the cloistral mapmaker, the crazed pedant, and the unreliable editor: diverting roles that he vastly enjoyed and at which he excelled.

    The Immortal 2004

  • It is this capacity, I believe, that promotes Borges so far above the level of the exotic antiquarian, the obsessed bibliophile, the cloistral mapmaker, the crazed pedant, and the unreliable editor: diverting roles that he vastly enjoyed and at which he excelled.

    The Immortal 2004

  • My own room, if it interests you to know, is somewhat cloistral and narrow, but it looks straight over the lawns to the hill-rise and the woods beyond.

    Flowering Wilderness 2004

  • We have now only four boys of tender age among us, two of them not committed to the cloistral life, but here to be educated.

    The Devil's Novice Peters, Ellis, 1913- 1983

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