Word.ws English Dictionary

reliquary

/ˈɹɛlɪ(ˌ)kwɛɹi/

reliquary noun: a container to hold or display religious relics.

reliquary: a container to hold or display religious relics
Image: Michael Du Pon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

reliquary (plural reliquaries)

  1. A container to hold or display religious relics.
    • “… There is an ivory virgin of the fourteenth century. I once found a buyer for that piece, but the old boy would not sell it.[…]The other piece—the one that concerns us—is known as the Borgia reliquary.”1935, Francis Beeding, “4/1”, in The Norwich Victims
    • And whether you think of those little cans as intellectual puzzles or reliquaries or scams, there are surprises inside.2009 February 13, Holland Cotter, “To Bump Off Art as He Knew It”, in New York Times
  2. (figuratively) An object that sustains the memory of past people or events.
  3. A person who owes a balance.

reliquary meaning in Thai

reliquary in Thai

container for religious relics
ธาตุ tâat

Forms of reliquary

pluralreliquaries

Origin of reliquary

Borrowed from Middle French reliquaire (modern French reliquaire), from Late Latin reliquiarium, from rēliquia (“a relic”) (English relic), noun use of reliquus (“abandoned, left behind, relict”), from relinquō (“to relinquish”), from re- (“again”) and linquō (“to leave”), from Proto-Indo-European *leykʷ-.

Words formed from reliquary

Questions about reliquary

What does reliquary mean?
Reliquary means a container to hold or display religious relics.
What is reliquary in Thai?
Reliquary in Thai is ธาตุ (tâat). See Reliquary meaning in Thai.
What part of speech is reliquary?
Reliquary is a noun.
How do you pronounce reliquary?
Reliquary is pronounced /ˈɹɛlɪ(ˌ)kwɛɹi/.
What is the plural of reliquary?
The plural of reliquary is reliquaries.

Words near reliquary in the dictionary

  1. relipidation
  2. relipidations
  3. reliquaire
  4. reliquaires
  5. reliquaries
  6. reliquary
  7. reliquarylike
  8. relique
  9. reliquefaction
  10. reliquefication
  11. reliquefied

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reliquary (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-reliquary.wav.

Cite this entry: “reliquary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reliquary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.