cloister
/ˈklɔɪstə
/noun
1A covered walk in a convent, monastery, college, or cathedral, typically with a colonnade open to a quadrangle on one side: the shadowed cloisters of the convent...
- In Carthusian houses the individual cells occupied by members of the community open from the cloister walk.
- A trumpet sounded through the sun-bathed cloisters of Manchester Cathedral after the coffin of Stephen Oake was borne in by six pall-bearers yesterday.
- Hundreds of us occupied the cathedral cloisters and held a short rally.
Synonyms
walkway, covered walk, corridor, aisle, arcade, loggia, gallery, piazza
technical colonnade, ambulatory, stoa
1.1A convent or monastery.Sometimes Behrens recalls these stories from the vantage point of the monastic cloister....
- The setting is revolutionary France and a cloister of Carmelite nuns.
- There were many famous cloisters in Byzantium where such women placed themselves at the service of society as a whole.
Synonyms
abbey, monastery, friary, convent, priory, nunnery, religious house, religious community
historical charterhouse
rare coenobium, coenoby
1.2 (the cloister) Monastic life: he was inclined more to the cloister than the sword...
- Jedidah, before you commit yourself to the cloisters, we want to give you a choice.
- When we meet Jesus in the medieval West, it is, in these and other ways, most often as the Christ of the cloisters.
- This embrace of the mystical dimension of faith does not require withdrawal to the cloister or a privatized Christianity.
verb [with object]
Seclude or shut up in a convent or monastery: the monastery was where the Brothers would cloister themselves to meditate...
- His skin sensed the suffocating stillness of the confessional as he heard the thick curtain sway close behind him, cloistering him inside the booth.
- ‘He's uncomfortable with it, so I tend to do it secretly, when I'm alone in the house or by cloistering myself in the bathroom,’ she admits.
- In this house they can cloister their passion freely since Maggie and Adam have in a sense pushed them together.
Synonyms
confine, isolate, shut away, sequester, seclude, closet
Derivatives
cloistral
/ adjective ...- This building from the first quarter of the 18th century became home to a century-old cloistral tradition.
- In the baroque atmosphere of the cloistral reading room you can enjoy exclusive dinners or cultural highlights.
- Many generations have listened to this tale of a young girl high in her cloistral tower lowering her beautiful hair on command to an enchantress.
Origin
Middle English (in the sense 'place of religious seclusion'): from Old French cloistre, from Latin claustrum, clostrum 'lock, enclosed place', from claudere, 'to close'.