Sanctuary

How to spell sanctuary

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce sanctuary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sanctuary mean?

1. nounA place of safety, protection, or refuge from danger or pursuit.
2. nounThe most sacred part of a church or temple, typically around the altar.

Sanctuary in a sentence

• The old barn became a sanctuary for injured wildlife.

• The priest led the choir into the sanctuary before the service began.

• After a stressful week, her garden was the only sanctuary she needed.

• Restoration work on the cathedral sanctuary took three years to complete.

Where does sanctuary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin sanctuarium, which named a holy place or a private repository for sacred things, and was built on sanctus, meaning 'holy' or 'consecrated'. The root sanctus is the past participle of sancire, 'to make sacred or binding', so the underlying idea is a spot that has been formally set apart from ordinary use. English borrowed the term in the 1300s by way of Old French, where it first referred to the most sacred part of a church around the altar. From there the meaning widened in two directions: a fugitive who reached a church could claim legal protection there, which gave us the modern sense of a place of safety, and in time the word came to cover any protected refuge, including reserves for wildlife. The same sanctus root surfaces in 'saint', 'sanctify' and 'sanction', and the tricky -uary ending it shares with 'January' and 'February' is exactly where the unstressed middle vowel tends to get dropped in spelling.

How the word is built

• sanct- (holy, from Latin sanctus)
• -uary (place for, from Latin -arium)