Word.ws English Dictionary

seraglio

US/səˈɹæljoʊ/

seraglio noun: a palace of a sultan.

Noun

seraglio (plural seraglios)

  1. A palace of a sultan.
    1. The palace of the Grand Seignior in Constantinople.
      • At these words he started up, and beheld—not his Sophia—no, nor a Circassian maid richly and elegantly attired for the grand Signior's seraglio.1749, Henry Fielding, chapter X, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book V
  2. (by figurative extension) A profligate or decadent residence of a rich person.
    • In 1936 [Charles] Schwab's agents approached the La Guardia administration in New York, hoping to interest the city in buying his mansion for the official residence of the mayor. […] But Fiorello La Guardia took great pride in the fact that he lived in a modest walkup in Lower New York. He...1988, Mark Reutter, Sparrows Point: Making Steel, Summit Books/Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, pages 287–288
  3. The sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines (odalisques) in a Turkish Muslim household.
  4. A brothel or place of debauchery.
  5. An interior cage or enclosed courtyard for keeping wild beasts.

seraglio meaning in Urdu

seraglio in Urdu

حرم سرا

Forms of seraglio

pluralseraglios
alternative formserraglio

Origin of seraglio

From Italian serraglio, from Vulgar Latin *serrāculum, from a late form of Latin serāre (“lock up, close”), from sera (“lock, bolt”). The Italian word was used (because of phonetic similarity) to translate Turkish saray (“palace”). Compare serai, serail.

Questions about seraglio

What does seraglio mean?
Seraglio means a palace of a sultan.
What is seraglio in Urdu?
Seraglio in Urdu is حرم سرا. See Seraglio meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is seraglio?
Seraglio is a noun.
How do you pronounce seraglio?
Seraglio is pronounced /səˈɹæljoʊ/ (US).
What is the plural of seraglio?
The plural of seraglio is seraglios.

Words near seraglio in the dictionary

  1. Serafini
  2. Serafinis
  3. Serafino
  4. Serafinos
  5. serafins
  6. seraglio
  7. seraglios
  8. serai
  9. Seraiki
  10. serail
  11. serails

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seraglio (page history and authors); seraglio (Urdu 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.

Last updated:

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

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