REFECTORY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does refectory mean? 

• REFECTORY (noun)
  The noun REFECTORY has 1 sense:

1. a communal dining-hall (usually in a monastery)

  Familiarity information: REFECTORY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• REFECTORY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A communal dining-hall (usually in a monastery)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

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

dining-hall (a large room at a college or university; used especially for dining)

 Context examples 

You yourself, brother Francis, have twice raised your voice, so it hath come to my ears, when the reader in the refectory hath been dealing with the lives of God's most blessed saints.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Ere the half-hour ended, five o'clock struck; school was dismissed, and all were gone into the refectory to tea.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent forth an odour far from inviting.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

These things I know for very sooth, for I had them from that pious Christian and valiant knight, Sir John de Mandeville, who stopped twice at Beaulieu on his way to and from Southampton, and discoursed to us concerning what he had seen from the reader's desk in the refectory, until there was many a good brother who got neither bit nor sup, so stricken were they by his strange tales.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Thanks being returned for what we had not got, and a second hymn chanted, the refectory was evacuated for the schoolroom.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely more appetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast: the dinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong steam redolent of rancid fat.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)