Sepulchre

WORD OF THE DAY


sepulchre \ SEP-ul-ker \ noun


Definition
1a : a place of burial
1b: tomb
2 : a receptacle for religious relics especially in an altar


Examples
"The secrets of business—complicated and often dismal mysteries—were buried in his breast, and never came out of their sepulchre save now…."
— Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, 1849


"He had begun making plans for his sepulchre soon after his election to the papacy in 1503, ultimately conceiving of a memorial that was to be the largest since the mausoleums built for Roman emperors such as Hadrian and Augustus."
— Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, 2002


Did You Know?
Sepulchre (also spelled sepulcher) first appeared in Middle English around the beginning of the 13th century. It was originally spelled sepulcre, a spelling taken from Anglo-French. Like many words borrowed into English from French, sepulchre has roots buried in Latin.
The word arose from Latin sepulcrum, a noun derived from the verb sepelire, meaning "to bury." Sepultus, the past participle of sepelire, gave us—also by way of Anglo-French—the related noun sepulture, which is a synonym of burial and sepulchre.