sanctum
Americannoun
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sanctums,
plural
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sancta
plural
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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:
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
Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 27, 2026
This is why she considers her room her sanctum, a place where she is her own true self.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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 George Saintsbury
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
There’s still more: occult rites and ancient runes, high-altitude sanctums and acid-washed visuals, plus a bevy of out-there cameos that Raimi uses to poke fun at the elasticity of the multiverse.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2022
For a long time, his work was held at a polite distance from the inner sanctums of the art world.
From New York Times ● Jul. 13, 2021
Schools can either be sanctums of knowledge or cesspools of intolerance.
From Slate ● Dec. 3, 2020
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.
