Monastery

How to spell monastery

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce monastery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does monastery mean?

1. nounA building or community where monks live together under religious vows.

Monastery in a sentence

• The monks rose before dawn to pray in the monastery chapel.

• Tourists can visit the ancient monastery on the hill above the village.

Where does monastery come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek monasterion, meaning 'a place to live alone', which was built on the verb monazein, 'to live by oneself', from monos, the Greek word for 'alone' or 'single'. In its earliest sense it described the solitary cell of a hermit, but as communities of monks grew up around such retreats the meaning broadened to the whole religious house. Late Latin took the word over as monasterium, and from there it passed into Old French and Old English, eventually settling into Middle English. The same monos root sits inside everyday words such as 'monk', 'monopoly' and 'monologue', all carrying the idea of one or alone. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle and the ending: it is -tery, not -try or -tary, even though British speakers often swallow that vowel when they say it.

How the word is built

• monast- (from Greek monazein: to live alone, from monos: alone)
• -ery (place suffix)