nunnery
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of nunnery
First recorded in 1225–75, nunnery is from the Middle English word nonnerie. See nun 1, -ery
Vocabulary lists containing nunnery
"The Tragedy of Hamlet," Vocabulary from Act 3
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Selection Vocabulary 4, Unit 2
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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:
Meanwhile Philippa, knowing that “visionaries are ungovernable,” fears that Barton’s presence in her nunnery portends catastrophe.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
Get me to a nunnery, but I’m weary of presenting filmland’s biggest honor to the kind of movie people rarely want to watch twice.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2026
Ms. Lhamo yelled at the knocked-down nun, looking straight into her eyes outside a whitewashed temple in the Druk Amitabha nunnery on a hill overlooking Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.
From New York Times ● Feb. 26, 2023
Last year’s most unlikely bestseller was “Matrix,” a novel by Lauren Groff about an obscure medieval poet named Marie de France and a 12th-century nunnery.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 16, 2022
As in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
They have blazed a path of progress in recent decades for Buddhist women — from education through advanced degrees and the creation of nunneries to seeking full ordination.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 9, 2021
A group of crows is a murder; pandas, an embarrassment; nuns, a superfluity — a term that dates to the Middle Ages, when nunneries were overcrowded, lice-ridden and destitute.
From New York Times ● Sep. 12, 2021
In places where touch is expressly forbidden – schools, nunneries, consulting rooms – any brushing of skin speaks volumes.
From The Guardian ● May 22, 2020
Alison Brie: Yes, and we read books on nuns and nunneries and medieval times to prepare for this film.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 4, 2017
“They en’t CCD. They’re called summing like the Security of the Holy Spirit, summing like that. They guard religious places—seminaries, nunneries, schools, that sort of place. They prob’ly come from Wallingford, from the priory there.”
From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman
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.
