sanctuary
Pluralsanctuaries
- 1A place where someone can be safe, take refuge, or find protection.
The quiet reading room became her sanctuary during exam week.
The old monastery served as a sanctuary for travelers caught in mountain storms.
Similarrefuge, haven, retreat, shelter, oasis
Note
Latin sanctus, holy, sits underneath: a sanctuarium was a shrine, a temple or a churchyard, so every safe place called a sanctuary borrows from the sanctuary of a church. The refuge can be from the law: in Margery Allingham's The China Governess a district is a sort of sanctuary, an Alsatia, and in 1985 federal agents indicted sanctuary leaders for harboring immigrants.
- 2
- 3The state of being protected or sheltered, as when someone is granted asylum.
The family sought sanctuary in a church to avoid deportation.
Medieval law allowed a fugitive to claim sanctuary inside a church for a limited time.
Similarasylum, refuge, protection, shelter, safety
Note
Here the word names a condition rather than a place, so it usually takes no article: people seek, claim or find sanctuary, and governments grant it. Medieval Latin sanctuarium already meant the right of asylum, the old custom that let a fugitive shelter in a church, and those verbs still frame it as a claim made and granted.
- 4The consecrated or sacred part of a church or temple, around its altar or tabernacle.
The priest climbed the steps into the sanctuary to begin the Mass.
Candles burned on either side of the tabernacle in the sanctuary.
Similarchancel
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English seyntuarie, from Old French saintuaire, from Late Latin sanctuarium (“a sacred place, a shrine, a private cabinet”; in Medieval Latin also “temple, church, churchyard, cemetery, right of asylum”), from Latin sanctus (“holy, sacred”); see saint.