sepulchre
Americannoun
noun
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a burial vault, tomb, or grave
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Also called: Easter sepulchre. a separate alcove in some medieval churches in which the Eucharistic elements were kept from Good Friday until the Easter ceremonies
verb
Etymology
Origin of sepulchre
C12: from Old French sépulcre, from Latin sepulcrum, from sepelīre to bury
Explanation
There are many possible resting places for your body once you die, and a sepulcher is the best option if you want a fancy room made entirely from stone. Think it over, because you can only choose once. Crypts, mausoleums, sarcophagi, sepulchers: each one is a place to bury someone, with slight variations. A sepulcher (or if you’re British you’ll spell it sepulchre) is basically a stone room with a stone coffin where your body lies. The word comes from the Latin sepulcrum, which means “burial place,” for obvious reasons. Pronouncing sepulcher could trick you, because the ch actually sounds like a k: "SEP-ul-ker."
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:
In some accounts he is buried with his wife and two children next to the tomb of Jesus — the ultimate martyr’s sepulchre.
From Time ● Mar. 30, 2016
It depicts a stern risen Christ on the edge of a sepulchre; the city's name means "holy sepulchre" in Italian.
From Reuters ● Nov. 16, 2014
Maurice, meanwhile, is terrified of mouldering in respectable suburbia, dragging some poor virgin into the sepulchre with him.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 5, 2013
At dawn of the third day, a worried Barabbas hid himself near the sepulchre: Would the dead man really rise from the grave, as he had heard some of the man's disciples predict?
From Time Magazine Archive
Singing and bearing candles, the nuns leave the choir and follow the priest to the sepulchre.
From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein
On another part of the coast we found two other corpses yet more scantily sepulchred, without so much as a cross to mark their resting-place.
From Letters from High Latitudes by Lord Dufferin
Thus thy spirit grew faint, thy strength dried up, and the dust of thy scribes has sepulchred thee, a living mummy….
From The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) by Nahum Slouschz
But softly tread upon the sacred ground, Where Britain's bards lie sepulchred round.
From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 13, No. 368, May 2, 1829 by Various
The present orthography has introduced an awkward mode of writing the derivatives, for example, centred, sceptred, sepulchred; whereas Milton and Pope wrote these words as regular derivatives of center, scepter, sepulcher, thus, 'Sceptered king.'
From Noah Webster American Men of Letters by Horace E. Scudder
Yet there, like a crushed pearl upon a heap of garbage, lingers the trace of beauty; and there, surely, though sepulchred in the caverns of vice, dwells something that was once innocence, and not unredeemable.
From Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession by Benjamin Wood
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.
