cellar
Americannoun
-
cellars
plural
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a room, or set of rooms, for the storage of food, fuel, etc., wholly or partly underground and usually beneath a building.
-
an underground room or story.
-
Sports. the lowest position in a group ranked in order of games won.
The team was in the cellar for most of the season.
verb (used with object)
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cellars,
present (3rd person singular)
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cellared,
past participle, past
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cellaring
present participle
noun
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an underground room, rooms, or storey of a building, usually used for storage Compare basement
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a place where wine is stored
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a stock of bottled wines
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
cellarsimple
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cellarssimple
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have cellaredperfect
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has cellaredperfect
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am cellaringprogressive
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are cellaringprogressive
-
is cellaringprogressive
-
have been cellaringperfect progressive
-
has been cellaringperfect progressive
Past
-
cellaredsimple
-
had cellaredperfect
-
was cellaringprogressive
-
were cellaringprogressive
-
had been cellaringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cellar
1175–1225; Middle English celer < Anglo-French < Latin cellārium storeroom, equivalent to cell ( a ) cell + -ārium -ary; later respelling to reflect Latin form; see -er 2, -ar 2
Explanation
A cellar is a basic, unfinished basement. In a very old house, the cellar might have stone walls and a rough dirt floor. Your cellar might basically be a basement, a place you keep your tools and do your laundry. Some cellars have specific purposes, including a storm cellar, where you take cover during a tornado or other storm, and a root cellar, where you store potatoes and other root vegetables during the cold months of the year. This kind of cellar comes the closest to the meaning of the Latin root, cellarium: "pantry or storeroom."
Vocabulary lists containing cellar
Salt to the Sea
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"Marionettes, Inc." by Ray Bradbury
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"After Apple-Picking" by Robert Frost
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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:
There were small acts of resistance, as when the best wines in the cellar were secretly walled off from the Germans.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
The gold was stashed in a bag under the stone cellar surface below the 1890s villa built for the brewery’s onetime owner, Theophilus Van Assche, said local police officer Katrijn Braem.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
During that winter, the farmhouse's cellar flooded, the pipes froze and "the tractor just decided to go kaput".
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026
The garden level holds a media room, guest room, laundry room and a cedar-lined 636-bottle wine cellar carved from one of the home’s original eccentricities: a secret tunnel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
During the summer, they kept the dough and yeast culture in the cellar so it didn’t get too hot.
From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack
The state opening will begin at 09:30 when the royal bodyguards, known as the Yeoman of the Guard, conduct a ceremonial search of the cellars of the Palace of Westminster for explosives.
From BBC ● May 12, 2026
It also had three kitchens, five bars, two wine cellars, a four-lane bowling alley, a helipad, a gym, a wellness center, a gaming area and an 85-foot-long infinity pool.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
“I have felt for a long time that there are thousands and thousands of American citizens with cellars full of guns,” Close said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 28, 2026
That preference held across a wide range of indoor environments, from science labs to art studios, locker rooms to wine cellars.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 11, 2024
Terrorized Berlin inhabitants crowded into cellars, subways, underground bunkers, and concrete flak towers.
From "Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
That said, it could also be cellared for a few years.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 27, 2025
“It transforms cellared vegetables and stale bread into something absolutely magical,” she said.
From Salon ● Oct. 12, 2025
Bonnie Raitt’s fireside longshot drinks like a cellared fine wine, but wasn’t exactly zeitgeisty.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 4, 2023
An adage had it that you drank wine cellared by your parents, and bought wine for your children.
From New York Times ● Feb. 13, 2020
This blasting of a friable and inflammable substance fills the cellared air with minute particles of highly explosive dust.
From The Coming of Coal by Robert W. Bruere
And even though glass will almost certainly remain the packaging of choice, we may see more boxes and cans, especially for wines not intended for cellaring.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 15, 2021
Stone’s Sysak, who has 2,600 bottles in his personal collection, shares Hancock’s reservations about cellaring IPAs and hoppy ales.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 29, 2015
When Dogfish Head released the latest batch of 120 Minute, in mid-August, beer lovers lined up to pay $200 a case, with many telling Calagione they had cellaring plans.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 29, 2015
Those transformations make cellaring fun, though the results can be divisive.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 29, 2015
He'll break out some day like a keg of ale With too much independent frenzy in it; And all for cellaring what he knows won't keep, And what he'd best forget—but that he can't.
From The Man Against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson
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.
