sanctum
Americannoun
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a sacred or holy place.
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an inviolably private place or retreat.
noun
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a sacred or holy place
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a room or place of total privacy or inviolability
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sanctum
1570–80; noun use of neuter of Latin sānctus; see Sanctus
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:
The former is heralded with a blast of horns; the latter guards its inner sanctum behind Tobie Windham’s officious sentry.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
We first meet her in her inner sanctum, her extremely girly bedroom in the depths of her extremely girly sorority, Delta Nu.
From Salon ● Jul. 6, 2026
“We stand on the walls, sentinels of the inner sanctum, against the assault of AI slop. The Ontology is based firmly in reality—there is, here, a dialectic between ground truth, tribal knowledge, and enhancements.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 5, 2026
“We stand on the walls, sentinels of the inner sanctum, against the assault of AI slop,” Karp said in his letter to shareholders.
From Barron's ● May 4, 2026
“I was shouted at from every editorial sanctum in America from sea to sea,” he later lamented.
From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler
The perfume, Lavs, is a concentrated version of the one he made to spritz on the papal garments before they were delivered to the Vatican’s inner sancta.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 15, 2017
Bunhill Fields has long fascinated historians and romantics alike and is considered the terra sancta of English Nonconformity.
From BBC ● Feb. 22, 2011
According to individual taste, one can greet it with a hosannah, a miserere nobis or a sancta simplicitas.
From Time Magazine Archive
On an indifferently argued staff paper he scribbles: "0 sancta sim-plicitas."
From Time Magazine Archive
It was not in Borrow's case a case of sancta simplicitas.
From Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 by Saintsbury, George
They make for an amusing odd couple entering the inner sanctums of the uber-wealthy in the New York metro area, often asked to do extra maintenance tasks.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
She allows the camera into the sanctums of her tanning booth and facial treatment sessions, but there’s an exhibitionism in these moments instead of conveying honesty and openness.
From Salon ● Aug. 18, 2024
Take the Hightowers, a minor presence in “Thrones”; based on the Sunday series premiere of “Dragon,” set nearly 200 years earlier, the family was clearly once a major player in Westeros’s innermost sanctums of power.
From New York Times ● Aug. 25, 2022
And Mickle’s thematic overreach doesn’t obscure the crisp and detailed view he offers us of Apple’s inner sanctums.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 3, 2022
Ever since I had set off by car through the wide golden fields of Orgoreyn four days ago, beginning my successful progress towards the inner sanctums of Mishnory, I had been missing something.
From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
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.
