shrine
Americannoun
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shrines
plural
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a building or other shelter, often of a stately or sumptuous character, enclosing the remains or relics of a saint or other holy person and forming an object of religious veneration and pilgrimage.
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any place or object hallowed by its history or associations.
a historic shrine.
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any structure or place consecrated or devoted to some saint, holy person, or deity, as an altar, chapel, church, or temple.
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a receptacle for sacred relics; a reliquary.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a place of worship hallowed by association with a sacred person or object
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a container for sacred relics
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the tomb of a saint or other holy person
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a place or site venerated for its association with a famous person or event
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RC Church a building, alcove, or shelf arranged as a setting for a statue, picture, or other representation of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of shrine
before 1000; Middle English schrine, Old English scrīn (cognate with German Schrein, Dutch schrijn ) < Latin scrīnium case for books and papers
Explanation
Set up some candles and a photograph of someone important in your life in the corner of a room where you spend time reflecting silently, and you've created a shrine. Shrine comes from the Latin scrinium meaning "case or box for keeping papers." Think of a shrine as a niche or case in which the spirit of someone special is kept. It could be a statue or some other form of commemoration to either a person or a relic. A shrine can be as small as a tiny mantel in your house or it can be as massive as a building commemorating, or shrining, a sacred person.
Vocabulary lists containing shrine
World Religions
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Maus I: My Father Bleeds History
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Ancient Rome - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation said attacks on Mecca and Medina province, where Islam's second holiest shrine is located, constituted an "unacceptable and intolerable transgression".
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026
Distinguished by a red-tiled facade and paper lanterns hanging overhead, the shrine had offering cups arranged in rows on a crimson table and a bronze urn spouting wisps of incense.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026
Down a quiet residential lane in central Taipei, behind the stalls of a farmers market, I found a shrine to the area’s Taoist earth god.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026
Koizumi left the shrine without responding to reporters' questions, but he later said on Instagram that he visited to "offer his sincere condolences to the heroic spirits who sacrificed their precious lives for the nation."
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
Slowly, timidly, as though entering a shrine, the boy’s fingers crept into it, flexed, curled the cracked leather, brought it back to shape, to life.
From "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli
Taipei’s grand temples like Longshan and Xingtian are only part of the city’s religious fabric, so one afternoon I went in search of the smaller shrines tucked into its quieter corners.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026
The sector, which already weathered the closure of mosques and shrines in the pandemic, is a rare type of tourism in a country reeling from decades of conflicts.
From Barron's ● May 4, 2026
But “Ankhmerwer”—gorgeously inscribed and illustrated and sprinkled with glimmering gold shrines, crowns, birds, gods and sun disks—rewards close looking and empathetic eyes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026
In a salty touch, the first thing Kenna does is remove his roadside cross, claiming he hated memorial shrines.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2026
Some of the visitors make shrines, leave flowers at her statue, or give small offerings to the sea.
From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy
The golden air is thick with suggestions of dim, celestial faces, but nothing mars the imposing solitude of the Queen of Heaven, shrined alone, throned in the luminous azure.
From Famous European Artists by Sarah K. Bolton
Thou art standing in the room, In a molten glory shrined That rays off into the gloom!
From The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume II by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
You have been shrined in my heart since that second time we met, but I knew it was hopeless——" "Clever boy!
From White Fire by John Oxenham
But another idol was shrined and secretly worshipped there.
From Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 10 by Various
His body was laid to rest with a sumptuous splendour;737 his relics, embalmed or shrined, were venerated with an almost idolatrous homage.
From History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 1 of 2) by William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Elsewhere he speaks of Tweed shrining the music of his cradle song, and the requiem he would most prefer—may that day be long in coming!
From In the Border Country by W. S.
The wisest soul, by anguish torn, Will soon unlearn the lore it knew; And when the shrining casket's worn, The gem within will tarnish too.
From The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes by William Michael Rossetti
Bosomed with the Blessed One, He shall mind her of her Son, Once so folded from all harms In her shrining arms.
From The Second Book of Modern Verse; a selection from the work of contemporaneous American poets by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
Bosomed with the Blessed One, He shall mind her of her Son, Once so folded from all harms, In her shrining arms.
From The Home Book of Verse — Volume 1 by Burton Egbert Stevenson
"May all that cling to sprays of time, like me, Be sweetly wafted over sky and sea By rose-breaths shrining maidens like to thee!"
From The Poems of Sidney Lanier by Sidney Lanier
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
