columbarium
Americannoun
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a sepulchral vault or other structure with recesses in the walls to receive the ashes of the dead.
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any one of these recesses.
noun
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another name for a dovecote
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a vault having niches for funeral urns
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a hole in a wall into which a beam is inserted
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of columbarium
1840–50; < Latin: literally, a nesting box for pigeons, equivalent to columb ( a ) pigeon, dove + -ārium -ary
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:
Soldiers who demonstrated "extraordinary valour" are honoured with outdoor graves and tombstones, while others are commemorated in urns inside the columbarium.
From BBC ● May 7, 2026
But on a dreary Sunday afternoon last fall, bouquets of white roses and blue hydrangeas enlivened the Spanish marble columbarium where Drakeo the Ruler is interred.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 25, 2025
If she left behind enough money in her estate, her ashes would go into an individual niche with a nameplate in a columbarium, where urns are stored.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 4, 2024
Cremated remains may be scattered, kept at home, buried in a cemetery or interred in a columbarium.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 29, 2022
So as she still sat with shining eyes, dreaming again of that columbarium, I pressed to the next point.
From The Tower of Oblivion by Onions, Oliver [pseud.]
Small armies of landscapers tend to lush grass and rolling hills, where private roads with names like “Memory Lane” and “Baby Land” lead upward past maximalist mausoleums, columbaria and replica Renaissance statuary.
From New York Times ● Aug. 31, 2023
Last year the cemetery opened a new 27-acre section capable of holding about 27,000 remains in specially built close-packed, pre-dug graves and a new niche wall and columbaria.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 25, 2019
The 16,000 spaces in the new niche wall and columbaria are waiting.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 2, 2018
Singapore prefers columbaria, in which urns of cremated remains are stored in cavities on a wall.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2017
Bordering upon this we found a whole hill-side honeycombed with columbaria.
From From the Oak to the Olive A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey by Howe, Julia Ward
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.
