Word.ws English Dictionary

ostiaries

ostiaries is the plural of ostiary.

Meaning of ostiary

Noun

ostiary (plural ostiaries)

  1. (archaic) The mouth of a river; an estuary.
    • the river of Nilus hath seven ostiaries, that is, by seven channels disburdened itself into the sea1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC
  2. One who keeps the door, especially the door of a church; a porter.
    • They had other inferiour degrees of the Clergy, vvhich becauſe they are meerly ſubſervient, and not conſiderable in Church-government, I ſhall onely touch upon them. […] Laſtly, Oſtiaries; vvhich uſed to ring the bells, and open and ſhut the Church-doores.1647, Nath[aniel] Bacon, “Of Other Inferiour Church-officers amongst the Saxons”, in An Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England. The First Part. From the First Times till...
    Synonyms:
    ostiarius

Questions about ostiaries

What is ostiaries the plural of?
Ostiaries is the plural of ostiary.

Words near ostiaries in the dictionary

  1. ostially
  2. Ostian
  3. Ostians
  4. ostiariate
  5. ostiariates
  6. ostiaries
  7. ostiarii
  8. ostiarius
  9. ostiary
  10. Ostic
  11. ostikan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ostiaries (page history and authors); ostiary (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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