priest-hole

British

noun

a secret chamber in certain houses in England, built as a hiding place for Roman Catholic priests when they were proscribed in the 16th and 17th centuries

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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.

Upstairs, besides the bedrooms, was a little chapel with some remains of Gothic carving, and a few interesting pictures of the fifteenth century; a cunningly contrived priest-hole, and a long gallery lined with dusty books, whither my lord used to repair on rainy days.

From Project Gutenberg

To such vandals we can only emphasise the remarks we have already made about the market value of a "priest-hole" nowadays.

From Project Gutenberg

Some priest who had used this priest-hole years before had left it there in his hurry; I wondered how.

From Project Gutenberg

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023