Word.ws English Dictionary

sepulchre

/ˈsɛpəlkə/US/ˈsɛpəlkɚ/

sepulchre noun: a burial chamber.

Noun

sepulchre (plural sepulchres)

  1. A burial chamber.
    • Near-synonym: crypt
    • By Mahomet, my Kinſmans ſepulcher,
      And by the holy Alcaron I ſweare, […]c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    Synonyms:
    tomb, vault, crypt
  2. (historical) A recess in some early churches in which the reserved sacrament, etc. was kept from Good Friday till Easter.

Verb

sepulchre (third-person singular simple present sepulchres, present participle sepulchring, simple past and past participle sepulchred)

  1. (transitive) To place in a sepulchre.
    • And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
      That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.1630, John Milton, On Shakespeare
    • Not one of the ordinary motives—the vanity or the selfishness which people call by the name of love—actuated her through this long trial; she had everything to fear, and nothing to expect. What creation of the poet ever exceeded this terrible reality of love sepulchred in this living tomb?1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXVIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 298–299

sepulchre meaning in Urdu, Malayalam, Arabic and Malay

sepulchre in Urdu

sepulchre
شمشان śamśān

sepulchre in Malayalam

ശവകുടീരം, ശവക്കല്ലറ, സമാധി, കല്ലറയിൽ ശവമടക്കുക, ശവകുടീരമുണ്ടാക്കുക

sepulchre in Arabic

burial chamber
قَبْر qabr

sepulchre in Malay

burial chamber
makam

Examples of sepulchre in a sentence

  • Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal sepulchre, whose obsequies we now celebrated.1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter VIII, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 253:
  • 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.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Funeral”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers...
  • 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.1891, Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, Section 1:
  • 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.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 14: Oxen of the Sun]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey]...

Synonyms of sepulchre

Forms of sepulchre

Noun
pluralsepulchres
alternative formsepulcher
Verb
third-person singular presentsepulchres
present participlesepulchring
past participlesepulchred
pastsepulchred

Plural of sepulchre: sepulchres

Origin of sepulchre

From Middle English sepulchre, sepulcre, sepulker, from late Old English sepulcer, Old French sepulchre, sepulcre, and their etymon Latin sepulchrum, sepulcrum (“grave, burial place”).

Words formed from sepulchre

Questions about sepulchre

What does sepulchre mean?
Sepulchre means a burial chamber.
What is sepulchre in Urdu?
Sepulchre in Urdu is شمشان (śamśān). See Sepulchre meaning in Urdu.
How do you use sepulchre in a sentence?
Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal sepulchre, whose obsequies we now celebrated.
What part of speech is sepulchre?
Sepulchre can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sepulchre?
Sepulchre is pronounced /ˈsɛpəlkə/ (UK).
What is the plural of sepulchre?
The plural of sepulchre is sepulchres.

Words near sepulchre in the dictionary

  1. sepulchralize
  2. sepulchralized
  3. sepulchralizes
  4. sepulchralizing
  5. sepulchrally
  6. sepulchre
  7. sepulchred
  8. Sepulchrer
  9. Sepulchrers
  10. sepulchres
  11. Sepulchrine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sepulchre (page history and authors); شمشان (Urdu) (page history and authors); sepulchre (Malayalam Wiktionary) (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-sepulchre.wav.

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