ossuary
a place or receptacle for the bones of the dead.
Origin of ossuary
1- Also ossuarium.
Words Nearby ossuary
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use ossuary in a sentence
The French cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette has 20,000 named graves and an ossuary with 20,000 unknown dead.
Geoff Dyer's 'The Missing of the Somme' Reconsidered | Louisa Thomas | November 11, 2011 | THE DAILY BEASTossuary, os′ū-ar-i, n. a place where the bones of the dead are deposited: a charnel-house.
After a time the body is taken up, the bones cleaned, and deposited in an ossuary called the Quiogozon.
They are probably now in the catacombs of Paris, mingled with those of the thousands of unknown or paupers in that great ossuary.
Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution | Alpheus Spring PackardI love to go to his ossuary of dead transactions, as I would visit the catacombs of Rome or Paris.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table | Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
In the middle, an open ossuary contains skeletons that have been exhumed in order to make room for other corpses.
Over Strand and Field | Gustave Flaubert
British Dictionary definitions for ossuary
/ (ˈɒsjʊərɪ) /
any container for the burial of human bones, such as an urn or vault
Origin of ossuary
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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