sepulchre

English

Alternative forms

• sepulcher (chiefly US)

Etymology

From Middle English sepulcre and Old French sepulcre, from Latin sepulcrum (“grave, burial place”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛpəɫkɚ/
• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛpəɫkə(ɹ)/

Noun

sepulchre (plural sepulchres)

1. A burial chamber.
   • 1590, Christopher Marlowe, Tamerlane the Great, Part 1, sc. 3:

     By Mahomet my kinsman's sepulchre,
     And by the holy Alcoran I swear […]

   • c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iv], page 269:

     He is knight dubb'd with vnhatche'd Rapier, and on carpet conſideration, but he is a diuell in priuate brall, soules and bodies hath he diuorc'd three, and his incenſement at this moment is ſo implacable, that ſatisfaction can be none, but by pangs of death and ſepulcher: Hob, nob, is his word: giu't or take't.

   • 1611, King James Version, Matthew 23:27:

     Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

   • 1810, J[ohn] Stagg, “Arthur’s Cave. A Legendary Tale.”, in The Minstrel of the North: Or, Cumbrian Legends. […], London: Printed by Hamblin and Seyfang, […], for the author, and sold by J. Blacklock, […], →OCLC, page 105:

     [I]n the reign of Henry the Second, a body happening, by chance, to be dug up near Glastonbury Abbey, without any symptoms of putrefaction or decay, the Welch, the descendants of the Ancient Britons, tenacious of the dignity and reputation of that illustrious hero [King Arthur], vainly supposed it could be no other than the body of their justly-boasted Pen-Dragon; and that he had been immured in that sepulchre by the spells of some powerful and implacable inchanter.

   • 1826, Mary Shelley, chapter 8, in The Last Man, volume 3:

     Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal sepulchre, whose obseques we now celebrated.

   • 1849, Edgar Allen Poe, "Annabel Lee":

     And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
     Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
     In her sepulchre there by the sea—
     In her tomb by the sounding sea.

   • 1851, Herman Melville, chapter 69, in Moby Dick:

     The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk.

   • 1891, Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, Section 1:

     Plato, too, it is well known, considered the body as the sepulchre of the soul, and in the Cratylus concurs with the doctrine of Orpheus, that the soul is punished through its union with body.

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, Part II, Chapter 14:

     The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage.

2. (Christianity, historical) A recess in some early churches in which the reserved sacrament, etc. were kept from Good Friday till Easter.

Synonyms

• tomb

Related terms

• right of sepulchre
• sepulchral
• sepulture

Translations

burial chamber

• Arabic: قَبْر m (qabr)
• Czech: hrobka
• Dutch: graf (nl) n
• Egyptian: (qrs m)
• Finnish: hautakammio (fi)
• French: sépulcre (fr) m
• German: Grabkammer (de) f, Gruft (de) f
• Greek: τάφος (el) m (táfos), μνήμα (el) n (mníma)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Malay: makam
• Maore Comorian: kaɓuri class 5/6
• Old English: moldern
• Portuguese: sepulcro (pt) m
• Romanian: sepulcru (ro) n, mormânt (ro) n
• Russian: склеп (ru) m (sklep), гробни́ца (ru) f (grobníca)
• Serbo-Croatian: grobnica (sh) f, kripta (sh) f, mauzolej (sh) m
• Spanish: sepulcro (es) m
• Swahili: kaburi (sw) class 5/6
• Swedish: grift (sv) c
• Turkish: kabir (tr), türbe (tr)

Verb

1. (transitive) To place in a sepulchre.
   • (Can we date this quote?), Milton, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
     That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

Anagrams

• sepulcher