Chapel

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈtʃapÉ™l/
• Rhymes: -æpÉ™l

Origin

From Old French chapele, from Late Latin cappella ("little cloak; chapel"), diminutive of cappa ("cloak, cape").

‘Martin was said to have torn his military cloak in half to clothe a poor man, who was later revealed to him as Christ himself. The cut down “little cloak”, cappella in Latin, later became one of the most prized possessions of the Frankish barbarian rulers who succeeded Roman governors in Gaul, and the series of small churches or temporary structures which sheltered this much-venerated relic were named after it: capellae.’ (Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 313)

Full definition of chapel

Noun

1. A place of worship, smaller than, or subordinate to a church.
2. A place of worship in a civil institution such as an airport, prison etc.
• 1918, W. B. Maxwell, The Mirror and the Lamp Chapter 3, One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”
3. A funeral home, or a room in one for holding funeral services.
4. A trade union branch in UK printing or journalism.
5. A printing office, said to be so called because printing was first carried on in England in a chapel near Westminster Abbey.
6. A choir of singers, or an orchestra, attached to the court of a prince or nobleman.

Derived terms

• chapel of ease
• father of chapel
• mother of chapel

Adjective

1. (in Wales) Describing a person who attends a nonconformist chapel.The village butcher is chapel.

Verb

1. (nautical, transitive) To cause (a ship taken aback in a light breeze) to turn or make a circuit so as to recover, without bracing the yards, the same tack on which she had been sailing.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To deposit or inter in a chapel; to enshrine.

Anagrams

• pleach