sacrarium

From Latin sacrārium.

sacrarium (plural sacrariums or sacraria)

1. (historical) In Ancient Rome, a place where sacred objects were kept, either in a temple (the adytum) or in a house (holding the penates)
2. The area surrounding the altar of a Christian church; the sanctuary or piscina. Sometimes specifically a drain directly to the earth, perhaps including reference to a basin, for washing vessels from consecration.
   • 1886, Thomas Hardy, chapter 2, in The Mayor of Casterbridge‎:

     The hay-trusser deposited his basket by the font, went up the nave till he reached the altar-rails, and opening the gate entered the sacrarium, where he seemed to feel a sense of the strangeness for a moment; then he knelt upon the footpace.

   • 2016, Martin Pousson, Black Sheep Boy, Los Angeles: Rare Bird Books, Part I, “Wanted Man,”

     The bathroom looked like a radiant sacristy, the sink a piscine, the drain a sacrarium.

3. (anatomy) The complex sacrum of any bird.

• OED 2nd edition 1989

From sacer (“sacred, holy”) +‎ -ārium.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /saˈkraː.ri.um/, [s̠äˈkräːriʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /saˈkra.ri.um/, [säˈkräːrium]

sacrārium n (genitive sacrāriī or sacrārī); second declension

1. A place where sacred objects are kept; sacrarium, sacristy, sanctuary, shrine.
2. A secret place (for private documents and/or valuable property)

Second-declension noun (neuter).

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

• Catalan: sagrera, → sagrari, → sacràrium (learned)
• → English: sacrarium
• → Italian: sacrario
• → Portuguese: sacrário
• Sicilian: sacrariu
• → Romanian: sacrariu
• → Spanish: sagrario (semi-learned)

• “sacrarium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “sacrarium”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• sacrarium in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “sacrarium”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• sacrarium in Ramminger, Johann (2016 July 16 (last accessed)) Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700‎, pre-publication website, 2005-2016
• “sacrarium”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin