telesterion
telesterion noun: a building used to celebrate sacred rites in Ancient Greece.
Noun
telesterion
- A building used to celebrate sacred rites in Ancient Greece.
- Central among them is what, to avoid controversy, it is convenient to call the telesterion: a building designed to accommodate the faithful inside, and thus unique among the forms of Greek sacred architecture.2005, Robert Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 351
- With each successive telesterion, the structure grew in size and capacity, an expansion that indicates the growing and continued popularity of the cult […]2016, Margaret M. Miles, A Companion to Greek Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 183
Origin of telesterion
From Ancient Greek τελεστήριον (telestḗrion, “initiation hall”), from τελείω (teleíō, “to initiate”).
Questions about telesterion
- What does telesterion mean?
- Telesterion means a building used to celebrate sacred rites in Ancient Greece.
- What part of speech is telesterion?
- Telesterion is a noun.
Words near telesterion in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: telesterion (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:
Cite this entry: “telesterion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/telesterion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.