feretory.

1. An ornate, often portable shrine or bier used to hold a saint's relics.

2. A place or chapel where a relic shrine is kept, often behind a high altar.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• portable feretory
• ornate feretory
• carry a feretory

On the page

The bearers carried the feretory through the nave beneath embroidered cloth.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror / gothic literary. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Singular feretory; plural feretories. Commonness: rare (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Ornate often portable bier for saint's relics; place keeping it, especially narrow space behind high altar. Established English ecclesiastical noun. Individual writer usefulness checked for a distinct physical, ritual, facial or acoustic function. Definitions/examples are original; genre suitability is not an inherent emotional rating. Writing functions: precise physical or ritual description, gothic scene construction.