CATHEDRAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does cathedral mean? 

• CATHEDRAL (noun)
  The noun CATHEDRAL has 2 senses:

1. any large and important church

2. the principal Christian church building of a bishop's diocese

  Familiarity information: CATHEDRAL used as a noun is rare.

• CATHEDRAL (adjective)
  The adjective CATHEDRAL has 1 sense:

1. relating to or containing or issuing from a bishop's office or throne

  Familiarity information: CATHEDRAL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CATHEDRAL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any large and important church

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("cathedral" is a kind of...):

church; church building (a place for public (especially Christian) worship)

Meronyms (parts of "cathedral"):

bishop's throne; cathedra (a throne that is the official chair of a bishop)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "cathedral"):

minster (any of certain cathedrals and large churches; originally connected to a monastery)

Instance hyponyms:

Chartres Cathedral (a Gothic cathedral in northern France; built in 13th century)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The principal Christian church building of a bishop's diocese

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

cathedral; duomo

Hypernyms ("cathedral" is a kind of...):

church; church building (a place for public (especially Christian) worship)

• CATHEDRAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Relating to or containing or issuing from a bishop's office or throne

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

a cathedral church

Pertainym:

cathedra (a throne that is the official chair of a bishop)

Derivation:

cathedra (a throne that is the official chair of a bishop)

 Context examples 

Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing, and our never having seen it; and secondly, on account of the great probability of something turning up in a cathedral town.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Well, there is the tower of the cathedral, and we shall soon learn all that Miss Hunter has to tell.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Your friend and mine, Mr. Peter Hawkins, from under the shadow of your beautiful cathedral at Exeter, which is far from London, buys for me through your good self my place at London.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in —shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It is not very far to Cahors, for surely I see the cathedral towers against the sky-line; but I have heard much of this Roger Clubfoot, and the more I hear the less do I wish to look upon his face.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

So here we are, installed in this beautiful old house, and from both my bedroom and the drawing-room I can see the great elms of the cathedral close, with their great black stems standing out against the old yellow stone of the cathedral and I can hear the rooks overhead cawing and cawing and chattering and gossiping all day, after the manner of rooks—and humans.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The path which the young clerk had now to follow lay through a magnificent forest of the very heaviest timber, where the giant bowls of oak and of beech formed long aisles in every direction, shooting up their huge branches to build the majestic arches of Nature's own cathedral.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not),—while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and rooks whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence would have done; the battered gateways, one stuck full with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses, the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere—on everything—I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)