cist

¹ American  

[sist] / sɪst /

noun

Classical Antiquity.

1. a box or chest, especially for sacred utensils.

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cist ² American  

[sist, kist] / sɪst, kɪst /

Also kist

noun

1. a prehistoric sepulchral tomb or casket.

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cist ¹ British  

/ sɪst /

noun

1. a wooden box for holding ritual objects used in ancient Rome and Greece

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cist ² British  

/ sɪst /

noun

1. archaeol a box-shaped burial chamber made from stone slabs or a hollowed tree trunk

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Other Word Forms

• cisted
  adjective
• cistic
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of cist¹

1795–1805; < Latin cista < Greek kístē chest

Origin of cist²

1795–1805; < Welsh < Latin cista. See cist ¹

Example Sentences

Lo hit a minor setback at the top of the year when she had surgery to remove a cist from her vocal cord.

From Washington Times • May 15, 2015

No human remains were found in the cairn or its central cist, suggesting the site was robbed of its artefacts in the past.

From BBC • Nov. 19, 2013

Gerald Feinberg, the Columbia University physi-No, the huffiest of all it-couldn't-be-done claims cist, once went so far as to declare that "everything centered on the notion that human beings could possible will eventually be accomplished."

From SAT Tests

Signed by Fas cist Dictator Benito Mussolini and a representative of Pope Pius XI, the pacts successfully survived World War II, Mussolini's fall and even a new post war constitution.

From Time Magazine Archive

This room has also a small cist of masonry in one corner, which calls to mind certain sealed cavities in the cavate dwellings.

From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter