SEPULCHRE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sepulchre mean? 

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

1. a chamber that is used as a grave

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SEPULCHRE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A chamber that is used as a grave

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

burial chamber; sepulcher; sepulchre; sepulture

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

chamber (a natural or artificial enclosed space)

grave; tomb (a place for the burial of a corpse (especially beneath the ground and marked by a tombstone))

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

crypt (a cellar or vault or underground burial chamber (especially beneath a church))

mausoleum (a large burial chamber, usually above ground)

monument; repository (a burial vault (usually for some famous person))

burial vault; vault (a burial chamber (usually underground))

Instance hyponyms:

Holy Sepulcher; Holy Sepulchre (the sepulcher in which Christ's body lay between burial and resurrection)

Derivation:

sepulchral (suited to or suggestive of a grave or burial)

sepulchral (of or relating to a sepulchre)

 Context examples 

Was it a chance that the wood had slipped, and that the stone had shut Brunton into what had become his sepulchre?

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

And there, in so strange sepulchre, his spirit fluttered and lived.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Hans got the sled, and the two dead men were dragged through the darkness and storm to their frozen sepulchre.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

"They got Bill, an' they may get me, but they'll sure never get you, young man," he said, addressing the dead body in its tree-sepulchre.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

One instant he was astride a broncho and flying through the fairy-colored Painted Desert country; the next instant he was gazing down through shimmering heat into the whited sepulchre of Death Valley, or pulling an oar on a freezing ocean where great ice islands towered and glistened in the sun.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He tried to make us act plays and to enter into masquerades, in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles, of the Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose—to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it—to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)